


Crawl Out Through The Fallout

by tkioz



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Self-Insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-13 02:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 85,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7959187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tkioz/pseuds/tkioz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you wake up in a Vault-Tec cryopod in the year 2287 you’ve got two options, lay down and die or crawl out through the fallout. This is the story of one man’s adventures in The Commonwealth of Massachusetts as he struggles to come to terms with the strange alien world he has found himself in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Cold Start

**Author's Note:**

> A few things to know about this story, I’ve labelled it AU for a reason, I’ll be altering small things about the game to make it fit closer to reality, such as the distance between places, the number of people in a settlement, and things like that.
> 
> While I’ve also labelled it as an SI it’s not really, it just fit in the tags better than modern guy wakes up in Fallout. The MC hasn’t taken over the Soul Survivor's body, he doesn’t have meta knowledge of anything post Fallout: New Vegas and he doesn’t have a photographic memory so he will forget things and make mistakes.
> 
> I hope to update this regularly, but not tri-weekly like I do with my main story Cruel to be Kind, which will still be updated as per normal. The chapters will be larger and the story has a defined endpoint.
> 
> This is not going to be a rehash of the game. There will be butterflies, actions will have consequences, and in true Fallout fashion... War... War Never Changes.

**Chapter 1: A Cold Start**  
  
The first thing I noticed when I woke was the cold. I’m no stranger to it, I grew up swimming in the Bass Strait during winter after all, but that had nothing on this, it felt like every cell in my body was encased in ice, drilling down into my very soul. The second thing I noticed was I couldn’t see. That’s when I freaked the fuck out.  
  
You see a few years ago my eyesight went from pretty good to legally blind in the space of a few months thanks to an infection, ever since then I’ve been deathly scared of it going all the way, more than a few nightmares have been about waking up blind.  
  
So of course I started clawing and screaming, my throat hoarse, my fists banging into hard and _sharp_ surfaces. I don’t know how long I railed against the cramped confines, if I had been more lucid the age old fear of being buried alive might have triggered my mild claustrophobia, but thankfully I was in a right state so it didn’t occur to me.  
  
Eventually I hit something that gave way and there was light. Blessed light. I wasn’t blind after all, it was dim and red, but it was _something_. Then there was a hissing sound, like hydraulic press getting warmed up before it ground to a halt with a tremendous screech, like someone had thrown a cat into a woodchipper.  
  
The light poured in deeper, I was in some sort of pod sitting at a right angle, and I could just make out the glass in front of me. With a heave I pushed at the door, it barely budged under my bleeding hands. It must have weighed half a ton at least and normally I’d have zero chance of budging it but I was a big bloke and adrenaline is one hell of a drug, so I kept shoving until eventually the gears kicked back in with another screech and the door swung up.  
  
I fell outwards and landed on my side, breathing deep panicked breaths that echoed around the cavernous expanse. I was in some sort of chamber with metal floors and walls, water dripping down around me. There were dozens of pods just like the one I had escaped from. At least I knew now why I couldn’t see out, the window was covered in heavy frost.  
  
What the hell was going on? The last thing I remembered was getting into bed after watching the latest episode of Killjoys. Hardly great sci-fi but better than most of the drek being aired, but I digress, either way you slice it I don’t remember being in some sort of _cryogenics_ facility, because that was all it could be.  
  
With a heave I pushed myself to my knees, shaking my head and wincing at the pain all over my body. I was still cold, but the hormones and neurotransmitters coursing through my body like a raging river let me ignore it. I looked around for someone, anyone, that could explain what was going on. No-one, just rows of pods, all closed with condensation on their small windows.  
  
The pods. I had been in one, maybe the others were occupied, maybe someone could tell me what was going on. Forcing myself I got to my feet, my legs like rubber underneath me, and struggled to the nearest, wiping the mist away from the window.  
  
I immediately wished I hadn’t.  
  
I frll back to the floor with a scream. I wish I could say it was a manly scream but it wasn’t, just one of pure terror as I glimpsed the horribly twisted being inside the pod. It looked like one of those pictures of egyptian mummies, with its mouth opened as if screaming for help.  
  
Crab walking backwards I bumped into another pod. I shot forward away from it, shaking like a leaf. This wasn’t a medical facility, it was a tomb. Struggling to get my breathing under control I forced myself to check another pod, maybe it was only one that had malfunctioned.  
  
I was wrong. Row after row, pod after pod, there was nothing but death. Each of them held a twisted caricature of the human form, all looking like they had died in extreme fear. I shivered and it had nothing to do with the cold. There is a reason being buried alive is an almost universal human fear.  
  
I finally I came to the end of the pods, and looked inside the last one. I was shocked still for a moment, inside wasn’t a twisted mummy, but it didn’t contain life either. There was a woman, looking perfectly healthy, except for the large bloody hole in her forehead.  
  
That was enough to push me over the edge, I fell to my knees and vomited all over the floor. There wasn’t much to come up, just yellow bile, but I gave it my best try as tears of terror and dread fall from my eyes. This was hell. I’d died in my sleep and found wanting. I’d always subscribed to the idea that the afterlife was tailored for the person and apart from spending eternity in a pit of snakes this was right up there in the eternal torture department. A bit high tech for the devil, but then again why couldn’t he change with the times? After all I’m about thirty percent sure he owned stock in Apple.  
  
I’m not sure how long I lay there on the floor, my mind whirling as I shivered next to a pool of my own vomit, waiting for a red demon with a forked tongue and a pitchfork to come and take me away.  
  
Finally my brain reset and I realised that nothing would be gained by lying around and feeling pathetic, so I forced myself up again and trudged onwards. There wasn’t much light, just the dim red from the pods and a few working panels in the ceiling filled with otherwise broken ones, but it was enough to see by. That should have been my first clue that was something was going on given that I was nearly nightblind before waking up, but at the time I was too shell shocked to notice it.  
  
Trudging forward like a man heading towards his execution I walked up the stairs at the end of the line of pods into the darkness. Thankfully the lights in that area were in much better condition and clicked on as I stepped into the path of whatever sensor was there.  
  
There were a few boxes on the ground, a desk with a computer with an old style CRT monitor, and a ratty chair that looked like it had seen better days just ahead of me, but that wasn’t what really drew my attention. Now that was the massive logo on the wall between two corridors leading away from the area. It was a logo that I knew.  
  
Yellow on blue, a circle with three lines coming out of either side and two words above it. Vault-Tec.  
  
“What the ever mothering fuck!?” I yelled.  
  
***  
  
There are benefits from growing up in a port city, one of them is learning to swear really really well. In about a dozen languages. Not very useful in day to day life, not unless you want to make enemies from Indonesia to Russia, but there is something very cathartic about questioning the parentage of your enemies in a polyglot manner.  
  
Because there is no way whoever did this to me isn’t my enemy. A person doesn’t go to sleep one night and wake up the next in a fucking cryopod in a _fictional_ location run by the bastard lovechild of Aperture Science and Josef Mengele.  
  
For a moment I thought I was in one of the Vaults from the games I’d played, more than a few had had cryo in them somewhere, but I didn’t recognise the number. Vault 111. The highest I’d heard of before had been 101 from Fallout 3, most of the others had been double digits. I knew there was a new game that came out a few months ago but I hadn’t played it, my gaming rig wasn’t up to it and frankly I wasn’t paying such an extreme ‘Australian Tax’ for something that would likely give me migraines. Seriously they need to fucking ditch that engine.  
  
It was around then that I noticed that I wasn’t actually wearing the t-shirt and shorts combo that I normally wore to bed, instead I was wearing a blue jumpsuit with said same logo of Evil Morons Inc. plastered all over it. It was surprisingly comfortable and had built in shoes. I wonder how many test subjects died to perfect it, because knowing Vault-Tec they sure as shit did something evil to make it.  
  
These are the people who turned liferafts for the _human fucking race_ into twisted experiments like the one with a thousand people, all heterosexual men except for a single woman. I mean fuck, what did they expect to happen? It doesn’t take a bloody rocket scientist! I’m not sure if the one with twenty people and one panther is canon or not, but that’s another example of their maliciousness.  
  
According to the terminal I found, which was unlocked and somehow still functional after god only knows how long, this was another of their little games. Vault 111, intended for the study of long term cryostasis on unaware subjects. Seriously what the fuck Vault-Tec? Are you just doing it for shits and giggles at this point?  
  
Based on the status readout, assuming it is correct, out of the two hundred people in the various cryo chambers just like the one I woke up in not a single person survived the process. Not even me apparently. There had been some sort of power interruption 1.90288e+9 ‘cycles’ ago. Fucked if I know how long that had been, I assume they are talking about seconds based on the absurdly long number but I can’t get the calculator working on this glorified DOS box. You’d think it would be just calc, or calcu, or something like it but oh no, nothing so simple for these idiots. Fuck what I wouldn’t give for a copy of Windows 3.1 right about now. The green screen is really starting to hurt my eyes as well.  
  
I’d read everything I had access to so I know I’m somewhere in the ‘Commonwealth of Massachusetts’, which I think replaced the American state in the Fallout timeline. Or did it? I know some of the yank states were Commonwealths but I can’t remember which ones, it never really mattered to me. Anyway the Vault was sealed in 2077, just after the nukes fall and apparently my pod was empty due to equipment failure and couldn't be repaired with onsite tools.  
  
I don’t know exactly what happened to the staff but given the contents of the logs about them running out of food I’m sure it was highly unpleasant. On one hand I should feel bad for them, on the other they worked for fucking Vault-Tec so they got off easy. There are much worse ways to die than starvation, not many, but a few. Normally I’m not anywhere near as vicious, I think if you’re going to kill someone you should do it quickly and cleanly, if not for their sake but your own so you don’t lower yourself to that level, but you know Vault-Tec.  
  
One thing the games got wrong was there wasn’t just a bunch of bottlecaps, weapons, and ammo laying around the place. There was plenty of _crap_ , but it was just that, crap. Empty boxes and bottles, plastic snack wrappers, broken electronics like the desk fan that scared the piss out of me when I knocked it over.  
  
Speaking of piss, the plumbing around here still works so there is that at least. An average human can last upwards three weeks without food, it’s not good for you of course, but you can do it. Water on the other hand? You need that far more often and you know how I said there were worst ways to die than starvation? Death by dehydration is one of them.  
  
At first I wasn’t sure about drinking the water, but my limited tests basically consisted of looking at it under the brightest light I could find, splashing a little on my hand to see if it did anything nasty, sniffing it, before finally taking a small mouthful and waiting. Not the best methods I’ll admit, but the best I had without a portable testing kit.  
  
So far I’m still alive and haven’t started crapping my internal organs out so I’ll consider that a qualified success. Unfortunately that’s about my only success. While I didn’t expect to find any food given the whole starving to death thing the staff did it would have been nice, adrenaline highs give me the munchies.  
  
The water itself tasted a little funny, slightly metallic, but that could be from rusted pipes and it's been sitting in tanks for god only knows how long. Of course since the facility was built for generational occupation, assuming they built to a set plan, then it’s reasonable to assume that the water system is fairly robust.  
  
I didn’t linger very long in the bathroom, just looking in the broken mirror was freaky. I looked like shit, my skin was far paler than it should be, almost like an albino, I’d lost a bunch of weight and almost looked skeletal, and my eyes were half sunken into my face. Not that I’d ever been a picture of beauty, tall, fairly bulky, with brown hair with grey streaks in it. The men in my family had a tendency to go grey early and I’d been hit even quicker than normal, I just turned thirty-one and already looked much older. At least I was clean shaven, but that wouldn’t last long.  
  
I’ve only explored the small area around where I woke up, the little control centre and the nearby bathroom. Given the existence of Ghouls in every Fallout game I’ve played I’m rather hesitant to go looking around. While I’m unarmed at least.  
  
Thankfully unlike the game I’m not restricted to what the developers consider a weapon, so I improvised. A chunk of shattered mirror, a broken chair leg, and some duct tape later and I’ve got a passable stabby-club. I’m sure it has a proper name, everything in history that has been used to kill does, but I like my name better. It has panache.  
  
Frankly I’d rather hide down here for as long as possible, but given the lack of food I’m going to have to move on eventually and it might as well be while I’m at my peak strength. So I started looking for a way out, after wrapping my hands up in torn off strips of a discarded lab coat, both to cover the cuts on my hands and to give me a bit of padding in case my stabby club slipped or I need to punch someone in the head.  
  
Despite what people claim hitting someone with your bare hand is rarely a good idea, even if like myself you know the proper way to throw a punch. Chances are you’re going to break something on all the hard and pointy bits in the human skull. Hence the wrapping.  
  
***  
  
About an hour into my exploration I was starting to think my precautions were unnecessary. Apart from a bunch of mostly empty rooms and some skeletons, and boy wasn't that a blast, I’d found little of interest. I’m honestly surprised that Vault-Tec bothered with the standard layout, then again maybe that was the point, they were working on a preset design.  
  
I’d always assumed that a lot of the things in the games were cutdown for gameplay reasoning, such as the distance between settlements and the size of certain buildings. It seemed I was right, the vault was _massive_ , you could have housed a thousand people and enough supplies to keep them comfortable for several years easily. Unfortunately for me and the poor saps that got incinerated by atomic fire Vault 111 was very very empty apart from several more chambers full of cryopods.  
  
You’d think there would be some spare vault suits or Pip-Boys around, but no, apparently not.  
  
On the plus side no face eating ghouls so... Yay?  
  
Well I did find one Pip-Boy on the arm of a skeleton and after lengthy consideration I pulled it off. Dear lord that was creepy as hell, I guess it's my cultural programming about desecrating the dead, or maybe I’m just being a big girl’s blouse, either way it was nought. The damn thing was smashed, looks like my boney friend tried to defend himself with that arm and took a heavy blow.  
  
Dropping the Pip-Boy with a sigh I retrieved my stabby-club went back to scavenging. I guess I got complacent because I’d stopped checking around corners before taking them and that bit me on the ass. Literally.  
  
I froze as I saw the largest bugs I’d ever seen clustered together in a huddle near a pile of skeletons, and when I say they were huge you can believe me, I’m Australian, I know big bloody bugs. Unfortunately I wasn’t nearly quiet enough, either that or the bugs could smell me or something.  
  
If I recall the game correctly they were called Radroaches and they came at me like a bull at a gate. I’d like to say I met the charge bravely, my stabby-club swinging and cleaving, but that would be a lie.  
  
Instead I fall backwards, screaming like a little kid, as they swarmed over me, their pincers snapping. At that point I guess my instincts kicked in and I threw the largest one off, it hit the wall with a splat, brown ooze leaking out of it.  
  
Stumbling back to my feet I shoved another down and kicked at it, missing the hellbug narrowly and over extending. I fall back against the wall, which is likely what saved my life, unfortunately I also landed right on top of another bug which didn’t take it very nicely, taking a firm hold upon my butt even as I crushed the life out of it.  
  
So two bugs down, god only knows how many left. That’s when I got mad, this time when i screamed it wasn’t in fear but anger and I swung my trusty stabby-club, the glass shattering as I impaled another roach. It didn’t slow me down as I still had the chair leg part of my now just plain club and it worked well enough on the rest of them.  
  
So there I was leaning against the wall, nursing a sore ass, panting like I’d just ran a marathon and surrounded by a pile of dead mutated cockroaches when I realised I’d likely have to _eat_ them at some point in the near future.  
  
That’s when I vomited again.  
  
***  
  
There was one benefit of my heroic battle, as the skeletons the roaches had been nesting on actually held some loot of value. Two pistols, three extendable batons, and best of all a _working_ Pip-Boy. It is also when I noticed another little oddity.  
  
I picked up the best looking of the two pistols, careful to keep it pointed away from myself. I was no stranger to firearms, but I was a stranger to pistols, only ever handling them occasionally at shooting ranges and I’d never owned one myself. The strangest came when I touched the N99 10mm pistol and imminently knew the make and model, where the safety was, and a dozen different ways to upgrade it.  
  
If it wasn’t for the amount of training I’d had in my youth when it came to firearms safety I’d have likely dropped it like a hot potato. As it was I carefully put it down and backed the fuck away, freaked out. There was no way I should know any of that stuff. Hell I couldn’t even remember the model number of my _own_ firearms, I just called them the .22 and the 4-10, or if I was feeling fancy the Lithgo or Pardner.  
  
After a few minutes of internal gibbering I decided to test if I was going mad or if someone, or something, had downloaded a bunch of information into my brain so I reached out and snagged one of the extendable batons, dropping it as I imminently knew that it was a Vault-Tec Security Baton, the proper way to swing it, and how to turn it into a cattle prod on steroids.  
  
Something seriously freaky was going and I didn’t have a clue what it was. What I did know was that my little club wasn’t going to cut it if I run into something nastier than the roaches and sitting around wasn’t solving anything. So I gathered up my loot, using a bit of rotted vault suit off one of the skeletons to make haphazard bag and dumped it all in there, after disarming the spare pistol of course, except for the best looking pistol and one of the batons.  
  
The baton went into the pocket of my own vault suit and then I sat down to check the pistol. I know ammo doesn’t last forever from personal experience and I had no desire to end up being called Lefty. With disturbingly smooth actions I dropped the magazine out, cleared the chamber, and caught the round in mid-air.  
  
The action on the N99 was a little grabby but given it had been at the very least decades since it had last been cleaned I was impressed it was actually functional at all, especially since the vault was so damn damp. I dry fired the pistol once, my new knowledge telling me that it needed oiling but that it was working acceptably.  
  
The next thing I did was examine the magazine, there were six rounds still inside it, all looking about the same as the one that I had ejected from the pistol. I fed them out, noting that the spring had a little too much give in it, but that was to be expected, still it was workable.  
  
Finally I moved onto the round itself, this was the tricky part. I now knew that powder inside the rounds was an advanced variant of the smokeless powders I grew up around and that it had a long shelf life, but that didn’t mean it was still safe to use. I wish I had a pair of pliers or something, but the closest thing I had was my teeth and I like them too much to do that. The duct tape was the only tool-like item I’d found so far, so I gripped the 10mm round with my fingers and wiggled. It took a bit of effort but after a while I got the bullet to pop off and poured the powder out into my hand.  
  
It was finer than the powder that I was use to, but again my new knowledge informed me that this was normal and based on a quick lick test it seemed to be fine. Oh god I just licked gun powder. I felt sick. Still it was the quickest method I had at hand since I had no lighter or other means to do a burn test.  
  
Shaking my head I put the bullet back in place and stashed it with the rest of my loot. Once I found some tools I might be able to make it firable again, but until then there was no point in taking the risk.  
  
I rechambered my new pistol and got to my feet, I still needed to find a way out of the vault and the grumble of my stomach informed me that I also needed to find something to eat. I steadfastly refused to look back at the dead radroaches. I wasn’t that desperate.  
  
Yet.  
  
***  
  
A short time later my luck seemed to change a great deal, first I found a janitor's closet. You wouldn’t think that would make me all that happy, but then again it wasn’t so much the closet but rather the toolbox inside that made me smile. It wasn’t much, just a screwdriver, a pair of pliers, a wrench, and a tape measure, but it would give me options.  
  
The second thing I found was the Overseer’s officer. That was the motherload. I knew from the games that generally the best stuff was in there. Unfortunately it was also locked down and based on the bullet holes in the walls around it and destroyed ceiling turret it had stood up to an impressive assault.  
  
Unfortunately for the door I now had tools and there was no gun shooting at me so I could take my time getting inside. Or I would have if the damn thing didn’t beep and slide open when I moved my homemade bag near it. It seems the Pip-Boy I had recovered had belonged to said Overseer and acted as a door key.  
  
Convenient that.  
  
Also convenient was that since the Overseer had been outside when he carked it it meant that his office didn’t have any dead bodies inside. It did however have a nice-looking couch, another working terminal, and wonders of wonders a bottle of whiskey sitting on the desk.  
  
I knew that I shouldn’t touch it, I might need it for cleaning wounds or trading, but at that moment I really didn’t care. I needed something to take the edge off and since I hadn’t found any weed or even smokes in my little tour then whiskey it would be.  
  
I popped the lid off the bottle and took a cautionary sniff, it didn’t seem to have distilled into pure ethanol, but just to be careful I’d need to take a taste to be sure.  
  
“Woah.” I said aloud, “That has one hell of a kick.” Swooning slightly from the rush I put the lid back on and sat it back on the desk. As tempting as getting blasted out of my head was right at that moment, and believe me I was tempted, I needed to keep my wits about me.  
  
“Okay Sam, if you were a magnomalical scientist with delusions of competence, where would you hide your stash?” I mutter to myself, glancing around the office. There are a few books on a shelf, nothing that really draws my interest, an ashtray with no lighter or smokes in sight, a desk lamp, an empty frosted display case on a cabinet. A painting on the wall, a painting hanging slightly to the left.  
  
“Ahh. The classics.” I said with a smile and lifted the painting down, just as I thought there was a nice wall safe and bingo it was unlocked as well. I frowned deeply as I looked inside, there were a few bundles of what looked to be American currency, which was likely completely useless in the outside world. What was of interest however was a pair of large needles, stim-packs, and a small box of 10mm ammo. Score.  
  
There were ten rounds missing from the box, but that still left forty, with the ones from the gun that gave me fifty one shots total. It was the stim-packs that were the biggest prize however. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t work like they did in the game, I’d seen some videos debating the effectiveness and probability of them, but even if they were just a coagulant and antibiotic combo they’d be very useful. If they weren’t out of date that is.  
  
I turned one of them over looking for an expiry date, no joy, just a packaging date, may 2076, so about a year before the bombs fell. They’d probably gone bad, but short of actually using them there was no way for me to tell. Better to hang onto them for now just in case.  
  
I wish this fucker had some RadX or RadAway because I’m pretty sure I’m going to need some when I go outside. Normal people seem to manage in the games, but then again they’ve likely had generations to adapt to the extra rads in the environment. Evolution takes longer than most people think but even a century is enough time for people to develop a slight resistance to radiation, if only because those with a natural resistance are more likely to survive long enough to breed, and I’ve got none of that on my side.  
  
After stashing the extra rounds and the stims into my makeshift backpack I turned back to the desk, time to go digging. I just hope I don’t run into any old time porn. Top desk had a pen, some note paper, and what looks to be some fossilised bubblegum. The pen and paper goes into the bag. Next draw contains more cash, coins and notes, along with some rubber bands and other miscellaneous crap, seriously was this guy embezzling?  
  
The last draw was when I hit the jackpot again, a wallet, a keyring with far too many keys, and most importantly what looks like the bastard offspring of a multitool and a combat knife. A quick check tells me that it is high quality and in good condition, that will be very handy.  
  
Handy for what I ask myself a moment later as I look at the blade. I shouldn’t be here! I’m a disabled former programmer who writes bad fanfiction to fill his days, what the fuck do I know about surviving the wasteland? Even if by some miracle I manage to actually get out there, what am I supposed to do? Uplift the savages? Yeah right. That’s Alex’s gig not mine, I sure as hell don’t have his advantages. I just dream about being important and powerful.  
  
With a sigh I slump down into the chair, ignoring the way it creaks under me, and look around. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I rub my face with my dirty rag covered hands. I’m still bloody cold, I hurt all over, and worst of all I’m hungry.  
  
What the hell am I going to do?  
  
***  
  
Turns out I was going to stare at the ceiling for a few hours and indulging in self-pity on an epic scale. I thought I’d gotten over my emo-goth stage back in my teenage years, guess not. At least I wasn’t painting my fingernails black or dying my hair ‘raven black’. God I was such a poser. On the plus side I was too broke and too much of a chickenshit to get any tattoos or piercings so at least the only evidence is photographic in nature... Or it would be if I was still on my world.  
  
I let out a deep sigh and shook my head, determined not to head back down that rabbit hole. I needed something to do but the idea of going back into the vault and away from the nicely secured office with only one entrance that was currently blockaded by as much crap as I could shove in front of it was unpleasant.  
  
Instead I turned to the terminal in front of me, there might be information in there that could keep me alive, assuming I could get access to it. After a few fruitless minutes of trying to guess the password, it seemed that Overseer wasn’t a _complete_ moron despite working for Vault-Tec as the top-ten common passwords such as god, password, 123456, etc. didn’t work, I gave up on that and decided to repeat the trick with the door.  
  
Fishing out the Pip-boy I waved it at the terminal and smirked as the system beeped at me once and logged me on as one Russel Anders Jr. The Pip-boy really was coming in handy, and for a moment I considered putting it on but it looked very bulky so I discarded that idea for the moment and returned to the terminal.  
  
The green on black was eyestraining and the OS was a nightmare to navigate but I grew up in the age of the text-based interface so I managed to find my way to the logs. There wasn’t much that I hadn’t already read, just some corporate bullshit and payroll records.  
  
After getting distracted by a game called Red Attack, some cheap Donkey Kong knock-off, for almost an hour I discovered something actually useful. Security camera footage. It seems Vault-Tec isn’t _completely_ incompetent after all.  
  
It was date-stamped with the same weird numerical method as earlier, I guess something in the OS had been corrupted, and the system only recorded when motion was detected so thankfully I didn’t need to watch decades or centuries of people sleeping away.  
  
The image quality was complete shit, I’d seen better RealMedia footage back in the 90s, and it was in the same eye seering green on black. Seriously what the hell Fallout, they had colour movie cameras back in the _1930s_ and I know for sure that was before the universes split given WWII still happened.  
  
So I got to watch myself fall out of the pod and faff around like a moron for a bit before deciding that I didn’t need the reminder of my idiotic behaviour. The next few bits were just radroaches that occasionally paid the area a visit, and I’d almost given up when I came to the next bit of footage. According to the datestamp I’d gone back what looked to be around a hundred million seconds... That’s about three years right? At least I thought so. My math has always been shithouse and I could never make heads or tails of math notations, I suppose they made sense when dealing with huge numbers, but it still didn’t mean I understood them.  
  
Anyway I was watching as a bunch of people in hazmat suits were working the controls in the cryo area while being watched over by what looked like one hardcore bastard in leather with bits of metal stuck onto it.  
  
It says a lot about how much I’d vomited that day that I didn’t have anything left to bring up when I saw what happened next. They opened the pod containing the pretty young woman that I saw earlier and took a _baby_ off her before shooting her in the head.  
  
What the ever loving fuck!?  
  
There is some shit you just don’t do, and stealing kids is right up there. I might not like the little shit machines all that much, but you don’t hurt kids and you certainly don’t shoot defenceless mothers in the head to steal them!  
  
I fiddled around with the camera angle a bit to get a better view and I noticed the person, a dude by the look of it, in the pod opposite the poor woman was freaking the hell out. Pounding on the door and screaming. I’d seen him in that pod earlier, he was dead as the rest of the poor bastards in cryo, but at least he’d _tried_ to do something.  
  
I felt sick as I watched the hazmat bastards fiddle around with the controls for a bit before leaving. It was them. They’d killed all those people after _stealing a baby_. Whatever their reason that is _evil_.  
  
After the video clicked off I exited out of the program and did a quick search on those pods. Nate and Nora Howard and their infant child Shaun. So now I had some names and the vague idea that it might be a good idea to get that kid away from the bastards who killed his parents and two hundred other people.  
  
The fuckers would pay. I suppose I should be grateful, instead of just wallowing in my self pity and waiting for to die I now had something to do, I had a mission. Now to get out of here.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: First off thank you to [Ren](https://forums.spacebattles.com/members/116942/), [Hiver](https://forums.spacebattles.com/members/30407/), [Mizu](https://forums.spacebattles.com/members/306469/), and [DaLintyGuy](https://forums.spacebattles.com/members/285820/) for their help in looking this over, you guys are great!  
>   
> Now onto the chapter itself, you might notice that Sam (no good place to introduce him in the chapter itself) is a wee bit freaked out, can you blame him? You might also have noted that he made a pretty huge mistake when it comes to how long between the kidnapping and him waking up. As he himself notes he’s shit at math, and intentional on my part.


	2. The Morning Light

  
As far as wake ups go falling off the couch and landing in a heap isn’t the best, but it still beats out the day before by a long margin. I still felt like crap and my guts were cramping, I couldn’t tell if it was because of the water or simple hunger, but it wasn’t pleasant either way.  
  
I really wish I had a tooth brush, but I settled for rubbing whiskey over my teeth and gargling with some water. The water didn’t taste as bad this morning, I guess flushing the pipes might have cleaned it up a little. The way my gut feels I think today better be the day I leave, assuming that is I can actually find my way out.  
  
So, order of business finish exploring the vault, gather as much loot as I can, bottle a bunch of water as who knows how safe the external supply is, then looking for the exit and getting out.  
  
But first, putting on the Pip-boy. This is not going to be fun. I’d read about these things, they inject spikes into your arm to monitor your vitals, and if some of the fluff is correct it allows speeding up your perception for the VATS effect. Either way it was going to suck. I hated getting blood tests done and those were done by moderately competent professionals.  
  
The leather-like material the straps were made of was a bit faded and cracked but it still seemed fine. I had zero clue about what power source the thing had but it was still working, even if it refused to activate while off a human arm, so there was nothing for it but biting the bullet.  
  
Huh. It didn’t really hurt. More of a tingle really.  
  
“Oh you son of a bitch!” I yelped as suddenly it felt like a dozen metal spikes, rusty and _dull_ metal spikes, jammed into my arm all at once. I guess the first sensation was just a probe because oh wow that stung.  
  
The pain faded surprisingly fast. I assumed that there was something on the spikes designed to dull the pain but I could definitely see why people wore the damn things all the time if that was what one had to go through each time they put it on. The fading pain didn’t stop me from glaring at the offending item as I waved my arm around, gently, to ward away the sensation.  
  
It took a few minutes for the Pip-boy to turn on, I assumed it was reading my bio-signs and configuring itself for a new user and sure enough it soon presented me a prompt to input my name. I’ll admit that I embarrassed myself when I attempted to use the interface like a touch-screen and was puzzled when it refused my input. I felt kind of dumb considering that the damn thing had knobs on the side and actual buttons, everything else in this damn place was like something out of the dark-age of computing so I shouldn’t have been shocked that the so-called ‘Ultimate in Personal Computing’ was just as bad.  
  
It took me a while to work the knobs well enough to input my name, I was half tempted to go with a nickname or handle from online, before deciding that no, I’d be better off using my real one. For one thing it would be easier to remember and for another well... I had a feeling I’d be needing to remind myself that while this world was real, apparently, I _wasn’t_ from around here.  
  
It’s not like my name is long, Sam Parker, didn’t bother with my middle one most of the time, frankly I hated it, but damn if it didn’t take me ten minutes to get it in correctly, and with the proper upper-lower case settings. I could see why so many people leave audio logs laying around if all the text-based interfaces are so terrible.  
  
Finally after what seemed like an eternity of waiting for the damn thing to load I was presented with a smiling Vault-Boy giving me a thumbs up before it faded into a display of my current health status. Huh. It was reading my blood sugar as low, no shock there, with some minor wounds on my hands and arms. That could be useful.  
  
The rest of the features were pretty much the same as I expected, minus the inventory management system of course. As useful as that would have been I hadn’t gotten my hopes up, after all if people had access to matter storage on that level then there shouldn’t have been a need for a resource war at all.  
  
I had a feeling that the geiger counter feature was the one I was going to be using the most though. I really didn’t want to grow an extra hand out of my stomach, or you know, turn into a ghoul. Immortality sounds cool until you realise it comes with a side order of your nose rotting off and the chance of going full zombie. You never go full zombie, it doesn’t end well for anyone.  
  
On that note I gathered up my loot in my makeshift handy haversack - unfortunately without bottomless enhancement, seriously if I was going to get dumped into a fictional world some magic would have been nice - and headed off, gun leading the way of course.  
  
***  
  
An hour later I had explored every room I could find and hadn’t found much of use. Most of the cloth had rotted, perils of natural fibers, and there was only so much stuff I could actually carry on me so that meant I violated the cardinal rule of looting everything. Not that I could see a need for broken desk fans or crap like that.  
  
I did manage to snag a couple of plastic bottles with working tops for my water supplies and best of all an actual backpack in one of the staff quarters. The straps were frayed but the synthetic material of the main bag was still decent enough, so I made do with bits of my makeshift bag and moved most of my loot over. I kept the tools, the multi-tool, the batons, extra gun, and ammo as well as the water.  
  
There were a series of rooms that I couldn’t access, each of them requiring a password to open on a nearby terminal. I guess even Vault-Tec has some stuff that shouldn’t be played around with and given one of the rooms was labed ‘Reactor’ and had many many radiological hazard signs near it that made sense.  
  
After my exploration was done it was simply a matter of finding my way back to the entrance. It was harder than one might think, these vaults were labyrinthine. I got lost a handful of times before I resorted to the one standby of marking the walls with my screwdriver, it worked after a fashion and soon I was standing in front of the biggest door I’d ever seen.  
  
That’s where I suddenly realised that by putting on the Overseer’s Pip-boy I’d likely overwritten his files and deleted his access... Thankfully while that might have been the case simply plugging the Pip-boy into the console and hitting the button was enough to trigger the opening sequence.  
  
If I thought my cryopod opening was loud it had nothing on several tons of metal that had been rusting in place for decades, or possibly centuries, grinding its way free. Dust and other various crap filled the air giving me a coughing fit.  
  
Carefully aiming my pistol in front of me I headed towards the now open door, watching where I stepped. The grating looked stable enough but I’d always had a fear of heights and wasn’t looking to break any bones if it gave way under me.  
  
“Huh.” I muttered to myself as I exited the vault proper. I’d expected to come out in a cave or bunker or something with the surface just in front of me. What I had not expected was a massive pad that looked big enough to hold a helicopter. Or vertibird if I was being location accurate.  
  
Given how dilapidated the rest of the vault was I was hesitant to get onto the pad, but there were no stairs or other method of egress in sight. Plus side if I crashed to my death I wouldn’t have to deal with starvation... Unless I broke my back and died of thirst instead...  
  
With that cheerful thought I got onto the pad and hit the ascend button. The entire thing jolted like a bucking horse and I grabbed onto the safety railing as the elevator slowly worked its way upwards with alarming noises coming from the mechanisms.  
  
There was a terrible grinding noise above. Dust and bits of dirt started falling and I looked up. Sunlight was peering in from an opening above me as a pair of massive panels slid apart. At that moment I was convinced the feeling of warmth on my skin was the best thing I’d ever felt.  
  
Then a falling rock nearly took my head off and I refocused on my surroundings. I wasn’t liking the sounds coming from the elevator at all, nor the way it was jerking around as as it went up. It seemed unbalanced and kept tilting slightly.  
  
Thankfully the roof-door opened all the way and soon enough I was nearing the top. With a heave I tossed my backpack up and over the lip just in case I needed to get off in a hurry.  
  
It was fortuitous planning as almost as soon as I did that the elevator tilted wildly, nearly sending me to the ground, but I held onto the railing. I was near the lip of the opening, even with a jump I doubted I could get more than my hands on the edge. I glanced down at the railing, it looked rusted to hell, but it might hold me for a few seconds. I tucked my pistol into the belt of my vault suit and hopped up.  
  
Clambering up I managed to stand on the railing and jumped upwards, feeling the railing give way under me as I did, and snagged the edge of the roof with my arms just above my chest. The ground shook and I nearly fell as the elevator finally gave up the ghost and crashed downwards several meters. I held on for dear life before scrambling up and over, almost losing my pistol as I did.  
  
I’d just made it onto the hard concrete ground when an almighty crash sounded and shook the world again. I crawled over to the edge of the shaft and saw that elevator pad had fallen about halfway down before tilting and jamming itself into the wall.  
  
I wouldn’t be getting back down there any time soon. A pity as it was a fairly safe environment I could have used as a base. Still better alive and homeless than the other way around.  
  
Looking around I noticed the area wasn’t as much of a blasted ruin as I expected, either they had been pretty far away from the bombs or the place had recovered much better than the Capital Wasteland. However while the landscape looked somewhat healthy the rest of the area did not, there were a couple of mobile office type trailers that had been smashed down, some wrecked cars and trucks, and a bunch of broken crates and rusted barrels all surrounded by a rusted and broken chain-link fence.  
  
After retrieving my sack I briefly considered looking around the area for anything of value, but the whole place looked seriously trashed and it was unlikely that there would be anything worth taking. I glanced up at the sun, I had no clue what time it was and my new Pip-boy didn’t either since it was still flashing quad-zeros at me and would until I set it, but since the vault was now out of bounds I would need somewhere to sleep that night.  
  
And food. It had been over a day since I woke up and in that time I hadn’t eaten. I was famished. But first I had to decide on a direction. Thankfully one of the few things on the Pip-boy that was helpful was the map. I knew there was a small subdivision just to the south of me, and indeed I could see it from my position. It looked like shit, maybe two dozen ruined houses arrayed on one side of a small river following a looping road, but still a place to start.  
  
I hoped the map function worked on inertial navigation not GPS, it wouldn’t be as accurate but it should be functional even after the satellites failed. But I had a pen and paper and I could draw a crude map for myself if it came to it.  
  
With a shrug I turned on the Pip-boy’s geiger counter function and started south, my pistol leading the way as always. No point in getting sloppy.  
  
***  
  
Half an hour later I was really starting to get annoyed with myself. If you dumped me into the Australian bush, even after a nuclear war, I would have been able to feed myself with ease. This American version? No chance. I’d seen berries, leaves, and even a few root vegetables but I had zero clue if any of it was safe to eat or if it would cause me to shit my stomach out my back passage. I should have paid more attention to American survival shows.  
  
There are ways to test of course, rub a little on your skin, eat a nibble and wait, that sort of thing, but until I had a way to heat water I was holding off. Better to boil the crap out of it first. I had played Oregon Trail in primary school on our class’s single Apple II after all, I know all about dysentery.  
  
Still I collected a few bits, a half dozen things that sort of looked like corn, if corn was purple. Then again maybe corn came in that colour, it wasn't like I’d ever seen the stuff growing in real life, just on TV shows. I knew that lots of vegetables and fruits came in all sorts of strange shapes and colours that you didn’t see on TV or in the supermarket. They tasted just fine, but people were superficial, if they didn’t recognise it, they wouldn’t eat.  
  
Soon enough I stepped off the overgrown dirt track and onto a real honest to goodness concrete path. It was bliss on my aching thighs. The little town, Sanctuary Hills according to the half rotted sign near the end of the trail, looked even worse up close. The buildings were shells and filled with broken and rotting furniture. It looked like no-one had lived there for a hundred years.  
  
It was like a ghost town and I’d never been very good with the idea of ghosts, they gave me the creeps just like the town did. On the plus side at least there didn’t seem to be any threats around. It was at that point I heard a soft whir from just around the corner of one of the houses on the main road.  
  
Pistol first I snuck as quietly as I could to the corner and peeked around. There floating in the middle of the street was a robot, spherical with a number of arms coming out the bottom. In the centre of the sphere was a large camera-like eye. A Mr. Handy by the looks of it. It did have a buzzsaw attachment on one of the arms and something yellow on another.  
  
I started to back away, not really interested in testing its programing when I stepped on a bit of broken glass which shattered with a crack. I tensed, hoping it sounded louder to me than it really was. It wasn’t.  
  
The robot spun and rapidly charged towards me, a tiny burst of flame coming out of the yellow device in its claw. At least I now knew what it was. A flamethrower. A servant robot with a buzzsaw and a flamethrower. Wonderful. Just fucking wonderful. This universe is crazy.  
  
Unlike with the radroaches I didn’t hesitate, the pistol snapped up automatically and I fired in a tight burst of three shots. The first round hit the edge of the sphere, sparking off the metal and spinning the robot in the air, the second and third missed narrowly. The robot’s buzzsaw spun menacingly as it resumed its approach.  
  
“Terrific! It's a fight, then!” The robot said with disturbing cheerfulness.  
  
I took two steps back as my eyes narrowed and I fired again, the robot almost on top of me, that saw looking very unpleasant. This time all three shots hit, one after another, the first again sparking off the chassis, but the second and third hitting the eye. The robot jerked in the air again and then started spinning in place, its arms flailing around wildly. That would have been a good thing expect but by then it was close enough to whack me with one of its arms. The one with the bloody buzzsaw.  
  
I fell backwards onto the ground, blood spurting out of my left arm as I yelped in pain. I didn’t know if it hit anything important or not, but it hurt like hell. I needed to finish the fight as quickly as possible lest I bleed out. I wasn’t dying in this stupid universe.  
  
Swinging up my good arm I fired again, this time with one hand. Three times I pulled the trigger, but only one shot sounded, the first. I knew for a fact there were ten rounds in the magazine so one of them must have hang fired or jammed. That wasn’t good.  
  
Fortunately for me the round that did fire hit one of the robot’s arms, the one with the flamethrower, shattering the supports and sending it crashing to the ground even as the robot itself was still flailing around and making disturbingly human screeching sounds.  
  
Dropping my pistol onto the ground I removed the baton from my pocket and extended it with a flick. I scrambled to my feet, holding my left arm close to my body in an attempt to at least slow the bleeding. I was feeling a bit light headed from the blood loss, though I assume that the hunger and shock were playing a part.  
  
Carefully I circled the damaged machine, my baton held ready, before darting in and smashing the carbon tube at the arm with the still spinning buzzsaw. I missed, overextending and almost falling to the ground. Narrowly I corrected and used the backswing to connect with the arm, smashing into it. There was an almighty crash and the shock of the impact jarred up my arm, but it did the trick, the robot stopped spinning and the claw hung limply.  
  
Not one to waste a trick I swung again, and again, over and over into the pitted and rusted robot. Everything in this fucking world was out to kill me and I wasn’t going down easy.  
  
I might have overdone it a bit, because I didn’t stop when the robot crashed to the ground, the light on the eye dimming and fading away. I kept slamming my baton down, over and over again until I couldn’t move it anymore.  
  
I crumpled to the hard ground, breathing heavily, beside the dead machine, which looked more like a pile of scrap metal than anything else.  
  
***  
  
A short time later I had recovered my wits and bandaged my arm up with the cleanest bit of labcoat I had left after pouring a bit of my precious water over the wound to clean it out as well as I could. It stung like a son of a bitch but the cut looked somewhat shallow and the bleeding had slowed so I don’t think it hit anything important.  
  
On the plus side my little fight had netted me something useful, after a bit of work I managed to remove the flamethrower from the robot arm. It wasn’t exactly in working condition anymore, but there was a tube of flammable liquid and best of all an ignitor. It wasn’t a lighter, more a round hoop flint to spark off the flame, it wasn’t designed for human hands and I’d have to be very careful using it but it would make my life much easier. Better than bashing rocks together or using the wood drill, which is just tedious in the extreme. I was capable of it, my grandfather had insisted on teaching me things like that, but that wasn’t to say even he would have _enjoyed_ it.  
  
It was starting to get dark and between the blood loss and the fight I was pretty knackered so I decided to explore the best of the ruined houses. It was in much better condition than the others but it was still a wreck. Though it looked like someone had been patching the walls given the odd colours and sloppy placement of some of the panels.  
  
Inside there wasn’t much, at a best guess most of the gear had been scavenged years ago, but there was still a small metal cooking pot and a broken chair. With a shrug I broke the chair even more, shattering the wood with my foot, before piling it just outside the house. There wasn’t any point burning down something that could be used to keep me sheltered after all.  
  
It took a few goes to get a fire going even with the sparker, but the wood was dry and a few drabs of the flamer fuel worked wonders. I left it for a while and gathered some more wood from outside while the toxic fuel burned away.  
  
I only had two of my four bottles of water left, my only safe supply and I was loathe to waste it, but a quick check of the river showed it was slightly irradiated. I didn’t know much about radiation, or even how it worked in this crazy universe, but I didn’t welcome the idea of putting it inside me.  
  
I was almost certain boiling it wouldn’t do any good, it would kill any harmful bacteria and other crap in it, but it wouldn’t do anything with the radiation itself. Fuck. I wish I’d been born a little earlier, by the time I was learning survival skills the Wall had came down and the Cold War was ending. I remember something about iodine, or was that to kill bacteria? Filtering it through clay? Something, but nothing I’d be willing to risk my life on.  
  
So in the end I measured out about half a bottle into the pot and dumped my corn into it before setting it on the fire. The rub test seemed to work on the corn, no hives broke out on my skin, and the single cornel I ate didn’t kill me, so I guess it was mostly safe.  
  
While my terrible soup was cooking I explored the rest of the house. It looked like a couple of people had lived there with their baby based on the crib in one room, unfortunately there were no mattresses, just some ragged old clothing, a hairbrush, and some empty bottles.  
  
It was very sad. It was also annoying because I was going to be sleeping on the hard ground and I hated that enough when I had a swag, and I didn’t even have that this time.  
  
Soon enough the soup was bubbling away and I discovered I didn’t have a bowl or a spoon to eat it with, so I lifted the pot off the fire with rag covered hands and left it to cool a little. There was no way I was putting my lips on hot metal even if the smell was driving me mad with hunger.  
  
So I sat there, looking up at the sky, it was late afternoon, drifting towards night and silent. I’d always enjoyed that sort of silence, no cars in the distance, no hum of electricity in the background, yelling people, or barking dogs, just the sounds of nature. It was so very very wrong. There were no warblers, kookaburras, wrens, or anything else I recognised. It was alien, strange. Even the insects were wrong.  
  
I’d never felt as alone or as isolated as at that moment.  
  
Then my stomach growled again, so loud it was almost painful, and I was reminded that I needed to survive and getting homesick wasn’t helping. Thankfully the pot and soup had cooled enough that I could handle it without my rag-gloves.  
  
It wasn’t much, just a thin broth that tasted like burnt popcorn, but at that moment after not eating for two days it was heaven. Of course I had to force myself not to gulp at it, out of the combined fear of bringing it back up and poisoning myself. So reluctantly I put it down after one mouthful and waited to see if I was going to die.  
  
Other than my body telling me to eat, eat, eat, there was nothing. So after about ten minutes I took another mouthful. I repeated that three times. I’m sure a proper survival expert would tell me all the things I did wrong, but honestly after half an hour of sipping, reheating, and sipping some more I was that hunger-blueballed that I just gulped the rest.  
  
Then a little later I was hungry again. I thought corn was American not Chinese?  
  
Still I felt much better with something in my guts. The sun had set in a rather pretty manner and there was just me, my gun, and the fire. At which point I remembered how it had jammed and decided I should probably do something about that.  
  
The trick to clearing a hangfire is to hold the gun away from you and wait for the round to fire, since that hadn’t happened in the last few hours I figured a jam. After disassembling the weapon using my new skills, which still freaked me the hell out, I looked over the round carefully. It looked fine, and the premier bore indications of fire, but it hadn’t shot, so I guessed I had a dud bullet. Borrowing a trick from my grandfather I dug a small hole with my hands and stuck the round into the dirt, bullet first and covered it up. That way if it cooked over in the night it wouldn’t hit me or spray hot copper everywhere.  
  
I serviced the weapon as best I could without any oil and reassembled it, loaded new rounds into the magazine and reinserted it. I had two, one from each gun, and was down to forty-four rounds. Not a lot, but enough to last a little while.  
  
With that done I decided to get some sleep, so after building the fire up a little bit, I curled up just inside the house, as close to the fire as I could get and still be under cover, with my sack as a pillow, and drifted off.  
  
***  
  
The next morning I woke with a groan. Everything hurt and I felt dizzy just laying on the ground. The fire had gone out in the night but I still felt hot, so very hot. My arm throbbed and pulsed. The sun was high in the sky.  
  
Struggling to sit up I undid the crude bandage and swore at the sight that greeted me. The cut was infected, there was bright red all around it, and pus was leaking out of the wound itself. Fuck. Fuckity fuck.  
  
Once upon a time I wouldn’t have been too cornered, but I wasn’t the same idiot that hadn’t worried about the ‘small’ infection on his leg that led to a year’s worth of health problems including but not limited to losing most of his eyesight. This cut was much bigger than the three centimeter scratch that lead to all that.  
  
Fumbling I looked around for my stim-packs. I didn’t know if they’d work or kill me, but honestly watching my arm rot off from an infection was a far worse way to go so I was willing to chance it. It might have also been the fever affecting my thinking.  
  
I carefully popped the top off the stim-pack and looked over the instructions again, the words blurring slightly, it said to inject it into the vein nearest the wound. Oh dear lord I hated needles. Still I couldn’t close my eyes this time, so I lined it up near my wrist and slid it in. Oh it burnt. Then I pressed the button on top and there was _fire_ as the injector pushed the contents into my body at a rate that couldn’t possibly be healthy.  
  
Still I managed to get all of it into the vein before I flopped back onto the hard ground and shivered as suddenly I was cold. I tried to get up again and restart the fire but I couldn’t get my body working properly. I was tired, so very very tired, and I closed my eyes and drifted off again.  
  
***  
  
When I woke again I was feeling _much_ better, I wasn’t sure how long I’d been asleep but the sun was creeping over the horizon and my bladder was full to the bursting so at least a day. I looked at my arm and was shocked to note that not only was the infection gone but the wound looked almost gone, there was a thin white line where the cut had been.  
  
I looked at the stim-pack laying next to me. That was damn impressive, not the instant heal that the game portrayed it as, but still hellishly effective. Even the tiny cuts on my hands were healed, scabs falling off as I brushed them.  
  
After taking care of the call of nature I went back to my little camp and looked around. There was no food left and I was hungry again. If the infection had taught me anything it was that I wasn’t safe on my own. I only had one stim-pack left and there was no guarantee it was still good like the one I’d used. I needed to find people. I had skills that could be useful, even if it was only working the land.  
  
I’d once swore I’d rather starve than go back to farming but now that the very real prospect of actually starving to death was looking me in the face that oath was looking less and less attractive.  
  
Packing up my gear I looked back at the ruined robot and the house before shrugging and heading south.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He killed Codsworth! Sam you Bastard! Here we go, the first butterfly has flown. Wonder who else we get caught in the winds?  
> As an aside I actually liked Codsworth in the game, but Sam isn’t the Sole Survivor and wouldn’t have gotten a friendly reception.  
> There will be less focus on the survival aspect of things as time goes along, but I felt it was important to show that precautions Sam is taking with what he ingests.  
> Once again thanks to Mizu for betaing this chapter. You rock dude. Thanks for putting up with my terrible spelling and habit of missing words.


	3. Concord at Night

I walked along the road heading south for a while. I probably should have explored the rest of the houses for supplies but the way things looked everything good likely would have been taken years ago and I wanted to get a move on. Find some people. Yeah that attitude was going to get me into trouble.  
  
I did stop shortly as I came across a dead dog just outside of an old gas station, it was surrounded by a dozen or so large rodents, mole rats if I remembered rightly, and for a moment I was tempted to butcher the dead bodies and take the the meat. Going by the stink, though, they'd been out in the sun at least a day, and had flies crawling all over them.  
  
I knew I was being picky, that I could eat the maggots and come out fine, and that if I cooked the meat well enough I probably wouldn’t even notice, but I wasn’t quite to the point of eating _rats_. Strangely enough it was the dog that was the most off-putting, he looked like a feral mutt at all, and even so the idea of eating him set my stomach roiling. I thought about Max and Titan, my current two dogs, Piddler, Duke, and Muttley, the dogs I had growing up and the very thought of someone desecrating their bodies killed any thought I had about it.  
  
I just couldn’t do it. Not yet at any rate.  
  
So instead I headed into the Red Rocket and looked around for a bit. There wasn’t much, most of the gear had obviously been taken sometime after the war, but I did manage to find a hammer and a couple of screwdrivers that weren’t totally rusted to hell and back.  
  
The biggest find however was an oil can with about 60ml of oil in it. It wasn’t exactly high grade gun oil and it was a bit dirty, but after filtering it through a bit of torn cloth I managed to extract enough to clean my best pistol, getting the action smooth again.  
  
Once that was done I headed south again along the road, stopping every now and then to add whatever edible bits of foliage I came across, there wasn’t a lot and I’d have to test them extensively, but I figured I’d have enough to eat come night and time to camp. And so I walked, and walked, and walked.  
  
I’d honestly expected to run into something nasty along the way, raiders, mutants, ghouls, rabid squirrels. Something. Yet it was fairly peaceful, almost like a nature ramble, only with my cracked roadway and less annoying birds.  
  
My legs were hurting from walking on the uneven roadway as morning became afternoon but on the plus side after some rough guesstimation based on how far I’d walked I figured out that yes, my Pip-boy was working off inertial navigation.  
  
Still it makes sense, I can’t recall if the Fallout-verse ever got GPS or not, so INS had likely escaped from the almost purely military role it had in my home universe. In addition it was an _old_ tech, dating back to before the Second World War, that involved accelerometers, gyroscopes, and an onboard computer to calculate position based off your movement via an advanced version of dead reckoning. The Germans used a crude form on their V-2 rockets and most militaries still used them back home when there was a chance the GPS could be knocked out. Hell if I was remembering rightly ICBMs and other weapons like that had their guidance systems based around INS.  
  
Or I could be totally wrong and it used something I’d never even heard of, either way it didn’t really matter. I had a functioning map that could track my location and that would make things easier, even if I doubted the map itself was all that accurate after a nuclear-frigging-war. Still there was supposed to be a town just a few miles away. Silly Americans, six decades and they were _still_ using miles? Really.  
  
Concord, I think I remember that from some movie or history book or something. I think it was involved in their revolution but I couldn’t really place it. Still it was a target and I needed one so I kept walking.  
  
***  
  
The town itself was in much better condition than Sanctuary Hills had been, which puzzled me until I realised that it was in a slight valley so it must have avoided the worst of the blast wave that flattened the hill community.  
  
The sun was almost down, bathing the area in that eerie glow of dusk. Thankfully not the glow of fallout though, just the normal sort. Unfortunately the place looked empty, which was strange given how stable the buildings looked. You’d think such land would be highly prized by scavengers and settlers. The dichotomy of empty prime real estate was what put me on edge and slowed me down.  
  
Just outside of town proper I ducked into the woods and stashed my backpack under some bushes, taking only a baton, my pistol, and the spare mag with me. Better to be unencumbered when scouting. I took a careful moment to memorize where I stashed the pack, five meters to the left of a broken signpost, just beside a large try with a broken branch.  
  
With that done I checked my pistol once more, nervously eying the town, there was something wrong with how empty it looked, before heading down the road, wishing in my head that Vault-Tec had gone with classic black instead of blue and yellow.  
  
***  
  
I waited until the sun was fully down before creeping inwards into the town. The moon was full and bright enough to see by, which was weird because ever since my eyes went my night vision _sucked_ , but at the time I didn’t really consider it all that much since my heart was trying its best to beat out of my chest.  
  
I snuck around the corner of a house and stopped dead, struggling to control my breath, as I saw the faint glow of a fire in the distance and the sound of voices carrying through the night.  
  
They might be friendlies, a caravan or a group of settlers, but there was no way to be sure from where I was and I wasn’t willing to take the risk of walking up openly until I knew. So instead I crept slowly forward, a few steps at a time, pausing after each one to listen and see if anyone had noticed me.  
  
Soon enough I was about twenty meters away from the small camp sitting in the middle of the road. I was laying on my stomach inside a ruined building that had two of its walls missing, my head just peeking out as I looked at the three people sitting around the fire. They looked like something out of Mad Max, complete with mismatched rusted metal armour, so I was guessing Raiders.  
  
Wonderful. First rad roaches, then a homicidal robot, now fucking Raiders. Just wonderful. This universe hates me. Of course I could be wrong and they might not be Raiders, just mercs, or travellers or something else.  
  
“Did you have to kill the bitch Bruv? I didn’t get my turn?” Gasmask whined. “I haven’t had any trim since we hit that farm last month!”  
  
Right Raiders it is. Fuck my luck. What I didn’t understand was how I could _understand_ them. It had been decades, if not centuries, since the bombs fell yet they were still using normal English. Languages can change _fast_ when there is no media, be it books or tv or something like it, to act as a stabilizing factor.  
  
“Cunt wouldn’t stop fighting.” ‘Bruv’, or at least I assumed who the guy picking his nails with a mean looking combat knife was, replied from his position next to the fire. The guy wasn’t wearing as much armour as the others but it looked to be higher quality and almost matched. “Anyway quit your bitching, we’re heading towards Old Abernathy's place next, you’ll get your fill then.”  
  
“Didn’t Ack-Ack’s crew kill them?” The third raider, this one a big black man laying on the ground with his head propped up on his arm, asked.  
  
“Just one of the bitch daughters.” Bruv said shaking his head, “Stupid cunt thought she could fight back, there is still the wife and the other daughter.”  
  
“More than enough to share.” The unnamed raider said nodding, “Now that we don’t have Gristle and the others to hog all the fun.”  
  
“Fucking Deathclaw man.” Gasmask whined again, “Sack owed me twenty caps and the ‘Claw just ripped him in half.”  
  
Deathclaw? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. My eyes went wide and my body started to tremble as I thought about the massive creature with claws as long as my arm that could shred _Power Armour_ with ease. Of all the fucked up things that the Pre-War American government had developed, and believe me they did a lot of fucked up shit, the mutated Jackson's Chameleon the size of a fucking tank with the disposition of a feral boar with a toothache was the worst, and I’m counting Super-Mutants there.  
  
Stupid bastards had thought them the perfect battlefield replacement for soldiers. After the bombs dropped they got out and spread like the damn plague covering the entire continent.  
  
“Did you see how it screamed when I shot its leg off?” The unnamed raider bragged, waving a clunky rifle of some sort. It looked homemade, wood and bits of metal sticking out of it. So far it was the only projectile weapon I’d seen in the group, but even if it looked like shit it could likely make my day even worse.  
  
“Oh fuck off about it Krag.” Bruv said flipping the raider now known as Krag the bird. “We were there and you were crying like a little cunt about to get her cherry popped until I shot it in the head and distracted it.” He tossed his knife down into the ground point first, “Pity the old bitch got shanked before we could grab her.”  
  
“Jared ain't gonna be happy with us.” Gasmask said, looking into the fire.  
  
“Fuck Jared.” Krag said, “He’s just a pussy who thinks he can tell the future. Stupid fuck. We’ll go join up with Tower Tom, word is he’s got plenty of food now.”  
  
“Yeah but Sparta’s in his gang and that old cock-knocker gives me the creeps.” Gasmask whined again. “Looks at you like she wants to cut your dick off and eat it with onions.”  
  
I’d heard enough. These guys were scum, but there were three of them and one of me. There was no way I was risking a confrontation. I had nothing to gain and everything to lose. I slowly started to head back the way I came. I could spend the night in the woods and come back in the morning when they moved on.  
  
As I exited the building into the middle of the street one row over from them I turned around and froze. There standing not three meters away from me was another raider, this one wearing the same haphazard armour with a pistol at his hip. He was doing up his pants, obviously had just been answering the call of nature, and I got a personal view that told me that raiders went commando.  
  
He opened his mouth, his right hand going for his pistol as he fumbled with his pants. Acting on automatic I swung my pistol up in one smooth motion, both hands grasping it with the index finger on my left hand along the barrel, as I fell into a shooter’s stance, right foot just slightly forward. I fired once, the bullet flying true and hitting the raider in the head, the right eye to be exact. The back of his head exploded outwards in a shower of blood and brain matter.  
  
The raider toppled to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, his pants coming loose, and he landed with a thud.  
  
“What was that?” A voice bellowed from behind me, it was Bruv I thought, “Gage? That you? Answer me!”  
  
Oh fuck. I was screwed. Boned. Rooted. Totally stuffed. I’d just killed a man, sure he was a rapist raiding scumbag but he was a human being on top of all that, and now his mates were going to murder me for it. Assuming they didn’t just capture me and do something far far worse before that.  
  
I started to run, I had to get away, and there were a series of cracks from behind me and the concrete spat upwards as bullets impacted near my feet. That was all I needed to kick myself into high gear, jumping over the hood of a rusted out car and throwing myself down behind it. Right I was in cover, that’s good. Then a couple more shots pinged off the car and another ripped right through the metal next to my head.  
  
I fell backwards, yelping. Right concealment and cover are different things and cars don’t stop bullets unless they are armoured, not even apparently the tank-like things that they drove in the Fallout universe.  
  
Scrambling back towards the car I pushed myself against the front of the vehicle, near where the engine block was, that should stop any rounds. A moment later I stuck my pistol over the top and fired off three quick shots, to buy myself some time. I doubt I’d hit anything blind firing like that, but it would get the raiders to pull their heads in a bit.  
  
“Fucker killed Gage!” Gasmask yelled, his nasally voice breaking in panic, “Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!”  
  
I started to duck around the corner of the car to see what was going on only for another wave of bullets to slam into it. I’d never realised how _loud_ gunshots were until they coming _toward_ me. I was frankly amazed that I hadn’t pissed myself and shocked that my hands were rock steady, not even twitching despite all the terror and adrenaline coursing through my body and soul.  
  
The instant the bullets stopped hitting the car and the swearing started up I rushed out, running towards the building I’d used as my spy-post, keeping myself low to the ground as I fired from the side back towards the raiders. I didn’t know if their gun had jammed or they simply ran their mag dry, but it was the only chance I had to get clear of the death trap I’d been in. As I reached it I dove inside like a rugby player chasing a pig. I hit the ground hard just as more bullets came my way.  
  
Scrambling around I hugged the rubble, trying to get an angle on the raiders, they were all out in the street, with Krag kneeling behind a rusted out fire hydrant aiming in my direction. The other two were brandishing melee weapons as they charged towards me. Gasmask was the closest with a tire-iron held upwards as he screamed like a madman.  
  
I sighted my pistol on him, bullets from Krag’s rifle still pinging all around me, and fired. The first bullet slammed into a wall behind him, internally cursing I corrected my aim and fired again, this time hitting him in the shoulder. The 10mm round went through his armour like it wasn’t there, dropping him like the sack of shit he was. He screeched and swore.  
  
Bruv threw himself into cover provided by an old bus stop as I pulled the trigger again, looking to put Gasmask out of the fight completely only for my pistol to refuse to fire. For a split second I thought it had jammed again then I saw the chamber was open, I hadn’t been paying attention to how many rounds I’d fired.  
  
“Shit.” I swore as I thumbed the release, allowing the magazine to drop outwards as I scrambled with my left hand for the second one in my pocket, slamming it home with an action that felt like I’d done it all my life, before racking a round into the chamber.  
  
Bruv was still in cover and Krag was still peppering my pistol with fire. He was a _really_ bad shot and was even worst at fire discipling as the moment he ran his second magazine empty I popped up from my cover and fired a tight three round burst at him. It was dark, he was well over twenty meters away, and I was using a handgun. I expected to miss him by a mile so I was very surprised when the first round took the top of his head off, entering just above his left ear and exiting at the crown of his skull.  
  
“You cockmunching jizz stain I’m gonna fucking gut you!” Bruv screamed, running out from behind cover and rushing towards me at an insane pace, his eyes wide and wild and clear to see even in the night. The combat knife in his hands glinted in the moonlight.  
  
I sighted in on him and fired, again with three rounds, but the raider danced between the raindrops, each shot missing him, impacting the ruined house behind him. He closed the distance quickly and I fired again, as always three shots, and missed again. This time my rounds hit the ground near his feet as I over-corrected.  
  
By now Bruv was only a few meters away and I was starting to get very worried, I stumbled backwards as I fired, finishing off the magazine with a series of rapid shots. All of them missed by a wide margin as the pistol clicked empty. I was out of rounds, and I highly doubted he’d be sporting enough to let me load a few of the loose ones I had in my pocket into a fresh magazine.  
  
As Bruv climbed over the rumble to get at me I dropped the pistol in my hand and frantically looked for a way out. As I did words from my past flashed through my mind. It was my grandfather, or rather the man I considered my third grandfather, the man who had raised me and taught me almost everything I knew about fighting and surviving. He was a tough old bastard, a boxer and street fighter who had been in more fights than I had hot dinners.  
  
_“When a man comes at you with a knife you’ve got two options Sammy_.” The words echoed in my skull, my mind flashing back to a night on the back verandah when I was nine or ten listening to him talk about his glory days, “ _You can run, get your own weapon, a brick, a bottle, whatever, or you can take the fight to him.”_  
  
Springing to my feet I did the one thing that Bruv didn’t expect, I stepped forward, _inside_ his guard, my hands snapping up like a striking snake gripping not at the knife, but rather the raider’s wrists. I wasn’t going to wrestle him down, though I had the height and weight advantage, no, I was doing something else. I slammed my head down, forehead first, right into Bruv’s face, right into the bridge of his nose.  
  
Blood sprayed as hard bone met soft cartilage and the raider screamed, his knife slashing out as he broke free from my grip, his left hand going to his face. I ducked back, avoiding the clumsy strike, and danced to his left, striking out with a fast right into the raider’s left side, my meaty fist slamming into his ribcage just below the armpit. Bruv was wearing armour but it didn’t totally cover him, my punch slipping through the gap and stunning the fiend, falling back, breathless, his knife dropping from his fingers.  
  
_“Once you have the advantage don’t let up until the bloody bastard is on the ground crying for mercy._ ” My grandfather’s voice again echoed in my head and I listened. Stepping forward I struck out again, hammering blows down upon the smaller man. He might be fine terrorising farmers and getting into gang wars but it was clear that he was just a bully, not a real fighter.  
  
In contrast I’d learnt to fight at an early age. In truth there are two types of boxing, the first is the type most people think of when you say the word, the one with gloves and rules and a ring. The second is more bloody, it is combat pure and simply, putting the other guy down before he can do the same to you. It is two men locked in battle. This is the type of fight that takes place in dark alleys with circles of men baying for blood while making bets or behind bars to settle scores. The man who taught me to fight had experienced both and made sure I’d know what to do if I ever found myself in either.  
  
Bruv was on his knees, his arms above his head as he tried to shelter himself from my powerful if somewhat frantic blows. Poppy would surely have given me a bollocking over my form, it was sloppy and rusty, it had been many years since I’d been in a ring or even worked a bag. It was still enough though, the few futile attempts the raider made to strike up at me were easily dodged or absorbed. Only one made any real impact, and sealed the raiders fate, he jabbed upwards hitting me in the groin.  
  
I grunted as my brain shut down for a brief second and I staggered back. Unfortunately for the dirty fighter and despite what they teach in self defence classes punching someone in the balls isn’t a magical off switch, you need to hit a lot harder than what Bruv managed, and against someone already in a rage it is a very bad idea. It just pisses them off even more.  
  
With a snarl I punched down, my fist slamming into Bruv’s temple, I felt the knuckle on my little finger crack against the hard bone. There is a very good reason boxers wear gloves, and it has less to do with protecting the person getting hit and more to do with avoiding breaking your hands on the hard bits inside a human skull. It didn’t stop me however, but it did stop Bruv, his eyes rolling back as something inside his skull broke under the punch and he dropped to the ground dead.  
  
I stood there over the third raider I’d killed in the space of just a few minutes, breathing heavily as I came down from the combat high. My inattention almost cost me my life as a bullet impacted a few feet away from me, right at head height, against the wall of the ruined house. I threw myself down and saw that Gasmask, the one I had winged with a shot earlier, had recovered somewhat and was laying on the ground near Krag having retrieved and reloaded the big raider’s weapon.  
  
The shoe was on the other foot, now I was the man without a weapon facing someone with a firearm, and I didn’t like it at all. My gun was on the other side of the ruined house, just where I’d dropped it, unfortunately getting to it involved moving past the opening in the walls, right in the path of the fucker with the gun shooting at me.  
  
Ducking down I picked up the combat knife that Bruv had dropped in our melee and considered the best way to keep my internals internal. From the look of him Gasmask was really fucked up, he was struggling to hold the rifle with one hand. Chances were if I charged him I could likely cover the distance before he managed to get a bead on me. Of course he could simply get lucky and blow my head off, so that approach was out.  
  
That left me with the choice of hunkering down or flanking him. Hunkering down meant that I just had to wait for him to run out of ammo, safer, but it also left the chance that someone or something might be attracted to the noise. Flanking him was more risky, but it would end the fight sooner.  
  
In the end I went with flanking. I kept my back against the wall as I edged out of the house towards the raider campfire and away from the bastard shooting at me. He didn’t seem to realise I was gone, still peppering the house with a shot every few seconds. Once I was clear of the fire zone I broke into a run down the moonlit street, racing towards the corner which I took quickly before breaking and glancing out to make sure Gasmask was still focused on the ruined house. He was, swearing and calling me all sorts of inventive names.  
  
He was about twenty meters down the road, I figured I could make it before he noticed me and swung around with his shoulder as messed up as it was, but I was never much of a sprinter. Taking a deep breath I stopped into a runners stance and took off. Fifteen meters, ten meters, five meters, and then my luck turned sour. I hit a pothole and went sprawling, the knife flying from me hands as I hit the roadway hard, my head bouncing off the ground.  
  
I struggled to my knees as quickly as I could, but Gasmask was twisting himself around, screaming in pain as he did so, bringing his rifle to bear on me. He might be a raping murdering piece of shit but he had guts, I’ll give him that. I threw myself to the left as he pulled the trigger and sent a burst of fire my way. Then his rifle clicked open, he was out of ammo. Finally.  
  
As the raider struggled to find another magazine on his dead comrade I struggled to my feet, my vision swimming and refusing to focus, and charged at him, unarmed. I wasn’t feeling very charitable, so my first kick was armed at his bloody shoulder, impacting directly on the wound. His rifle went flying from his good arm as he screamed like a stuck pig.  
  
“How do you like someone who can fight back!” I screamed at the raider as I laid the boots in, “Not some defenceless child you sick fuck! Come on your bastard! Tell me how to you like it!”  
  
I didn’t let up, kicking downwards with each breath, slamming my Vault-Tec shoes into his torso and head over and over again, blood spraying from his face and shoulder with each kick. I didn’t stop until I missed a kick and fall on my backside, hitting the ground hard, but by then I really didn’t need to worry about Gasmask anymore, his skull was shattered and his brain was leaking all over the road.  
  
I lay there breathing heavily, my legs soaked in blood, until I started to giggle. It was over. I was alive. They were dead. Oh god... They were dead. I had just killed four people. Raping murdering people but still people. My giggles turned into sobs and I curled up into a ball, rocking back and forth as I cried.  
  
***  
  
After a while, I’m not sure how long really, I recovered my wits. Coming down from an adrenaline high was intense, combining that with breaking one of the most ingrained cultural taboos was just asking for a mental break. _Thou Shalt Not Kill_ was pretty universal in my world, and doubly so in my nation. There was a reason police and soldiers got so much training in how to overcome it for the greater good, and I was neither.  
  
I thought it would hit me harder, but honestly I was just feeling numb at that point, drained of energy and thought. So I struggled to my feet and staggered back towards where I had left my pistol, I’d sort out what to do with the raiders in the morning.  
  
It was only as I was nearing the ruined house that I heard a groan, I spun, holding Bruv’s recovered knife out in front of me as I did. Maybe one of them was still alive. I really hoped not. I didn’t think I could finish them off, not in cold blood. But it wasn’t that, instead I saw a figure leaning against the door of a large building at the end of the road.  
  
Carefully I walked closer, I likely should have gone back for my pistol but at the time I didn’t consider it, it was only when I got closer that I realised the person wasn’t leaning against the doors. He was _nailed_ to them. Bits of broken metal jabbed through his arms and legs holding him in place.  
  
I broke into a run, taking the stairs two at a time, before skidding to a halt in front of him.  
  
“Holy Christ!” I swore, “How are you still alive?”  
  
“Not sure I am.” The man said, his words almost a whisper and strained, as he weakly chuckled, spit tinged with blood bubbling from his mouth as he spoke.  
  
“Who are you? What happened?” I demanded, not really thinking how _stupid_ asking a man in his condition questions like that was.  
  
“Preston Garvey... Commonwealth... Minutemen...” He gurgled, before seeming to gain strength, “Raiders hit our group, we held up here, then the Deathclaw came. Truce...” His words became slurred again, “Turned... on... us...”  
  
“Fuck.” I said, shaking my head, “Stop talking! I’ll get you down and help you.” I thought about the stim-pack back with the rest of my gear just outside of town, it would take me a while to get back there and recover it, and I honestly doubted it would save him, but I had to try.  
  
“Don’t... bother...” He slurred again, “Already... dead... glad... you... stopped... them...”  
  
“Don’t talk like that.” I demanded as I looked for a safe way to get him down, I didn’t know shit about medicine but I knew you shouldn’t pull objects out of wounds unless you knew what you were doing, otherwise you just made it worse.  
  
“Find... Ronnie... Shaw...” Preston said, his eyes suddenly gaining fire, “She’s the last... Help her rebuild... Promise... Promise...” His eyes lost their luster and he slumped forward against the bits of metal holding to the door, his chest raising once more before falling for the last time with a rattle. He was gone.  
  
“I will.” I promised the man, my eyes wet and my voice thick. “I promise.”  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that’s two companions down! (The dog wasn’t Dogmeat, but rather the one you find on the bridge leaving Sanctuary). Don’t worry this isn’t some weird murder fic where Sam arrives just too late to save them, but since he spent extra time in the Vault and Sanctuary he was too late to save President Gravy Preston Garvey and his merry band. Poor Momma Murphey. I always liked you. The rest not so much, lazy bastards, but you didn’t deserve your fate.
> 
> Thanks as always go to Mizu for his beta work.
> 
> I think that was the longest continuous action sequence that I’ve ever written, I hope you enjoyed it, I had a bit of trouble getting things working for a bit, and honestly writing the raider dialogue skeeved me the hell out.
> 
> On the subject of Preston knowing about Ronnie Shaw well... I’m going to fudge that a little so I can keep the Minuteman involved.


	4. One Foot After Another

Dawn came quickly, I’d slept close to the raider’s fire, caring more about warmth than anything else in my fatigued state. Not even the smell of the meat they had been cooking on the fire had managed to keep me from passing out and it had been over a day since I’d last eaten anything.  
  
So when I woke up I was starving and the cold meat above the dead fire looked so inviting that I forwent my normal safety precautions and just gulped it down. I was about half way through the first chunk when I realised that raiders aren’t picky and more than a few in the various games had resorted to... _Long Pork_.  
  
I stopped chewing and looked at the meat in my hands, wondering if perhaps I’d just been gnawing on human flesh. It didn’t _look_ like it, then again I’d never seen cooked human meat, and since the nickname was Long Pork and the actual meat I was eating tasted more like lamb than anything else. I looked around the raider’s camp and let out a huge sigh of relief when I noted a skinned and gutted mole-rat with bits of its flanks missing.  
  
I was eating _rat_ , or rather mole, or maybe both? Fucked if I know. But it was better than the idea that I was eating _people_ , so I shrugged and kept shoving it into my mouth. If I didn’t die from it I’d likely take some more for traveling. I was tempted to hang around the area for a bit, but honestly I didn’t want to be reminded of what I did the night before, nor be here if anyone came looking for the raiders.  
  
Still there was no point in leaving behind useful gear and between the raiders and their victims there was plenty. I’d need to gather it, and bury the victims of course - the raiders could rot in the open for all I cared -, but better I use it then letting it go to waste.  
  
I finished off all the meat and washed it down with a pot of water that had been sitting just away from the fire, I guess even raiders boil their water. My geiger counter clicked a little when i waved it over it, but there really wasn’t much choice. I had maybe half a bottle left with my stuff back outside of town and I was going to need to drink the local water soon enough.  
  
After my repast was finished I decided to go retrieve my bag, before doing some looting.  
  
***  
  
After returning to the camp I reloaded my magazines and cleaned my pistol as best I could, using the last of my oil, before looking around the camp. There wasn’t much really, I guess the raiders liked to travel light. I was down to twenty two 10mm rounds, having spent almost half my ammunition the night before in my battle with the raiders.  
  
Thankfully the raiders had done most of my looting for me, stripping their victims of clothing and valuables and piling it up near their camp. They’d also hit up their former comrades, leaving their bodies one street over near the massive corpse of the Deathclaw.  
  
Just getting near it made my skin crawl, I knew it was dead not just because I heard the raiders talking about it the night before but because of the open gashes all over it that were covered in flies and other bugs as they enjoyed an all you can eat buffet.  
  
It was a big beasty, the last time I’d seen an animal as large was my trip to the Melbourne Zoo in grade six when we saw elephants and while I’m sure they could have squashed me at least they didn’t have foot long claws and teeth that looked like they belonged inside the mouth of a dinosaur.  
  
Frankly if I ever ran into a live one I think I’d better be wearing my brown pants because I was feeling the urge right about now.  
  
Granted the pile of fifteen naked dead bodies near it didn’t help the atmosphere. I couldn’t tell which were the raiders killed by the Deathclaw and which were from Preston’s group so I guess I’ll need to bury all of them. The fuckers I killed last night can rot though. No nice grave for them.  
  
But first, loot. I really didn’t enjoy stripping people of their gear, even if they had tried to kill me, but it was necessary. I left them their clothes, which is more than they did for their victims, because honestly I didn’t want the filthy things. I did take the armour and whatever was in their pockets though.  
  
I didn’t find much, just a handful of bottle caps which I pocketed, scraps of paper, and a found loose rounds of what looked to be .38 ammunition. I did find something that looked like a red asthma puffer in Gasmask’s pocket, I figured it was Jet based on meta knowledge. That I wasn’t ever going to use. That shit might give you bullet time but if I recalled the lore correctly it was also the bastard lovechild of meth and krokodil.  
  
I did gather up the two guns I’d seen the night before, the rifle off Krag and the pistol off Gage. Both used .38 rounds and both looked like they had been made in a woodworking class filled with drug addicted ten year old boys. They were only missing the badly painted naked women to complete the image. Just looking at them offended me on a deep and personal level, but I wasn’t stupid, I knew they might be useful, so I stacked them with the rest of my salvage.  
  
The armour from the raiders was almost not worth the effort of gathering, it was either cracked leather with bits of metal jammed into it, or chunks of metal over cloth. The one exception was Bruv’s chest piece, it actually looked to be some sort of kevlar-polymer hybrid with a faded US Army stencil on the inside. After I finished scavenging through the pile of gear that the raiders had amassed I found a left leg guard of the same material.  
  
They fit well enough after a bit of fiddling with the make-shift straps the raiders had put on them, and I hoped they worked as well as they looked because having something between me and a bullet was well worth the extra weight.  
  
The rest of the piled loot wasn’t that great, just more raider armour, a coat that looked like it had seen better days, some homemade shoes, and ragged clothing. I took some of the clothing to use as bandages, but the rest of it I stashed in the upper level of one of the houses behind some rusted out white goods. I was limited in what I could carry, but who knows I might be back this way sometime and find a use for it. One good thing I found was a stash of .38 calibre rounds for the home-made weapons, all up seventy-eight, though some looked a bit dodgy.  
  
I also found what looked to be the remains of an energy rifle, it was utterly trashed, cut almost in half by something very sharp. I think someone tried to use it to block a Deathclaw strike. After touching it I knew that I could repair it... if I had parts and about a week to work, but since I had neither I decided to take the more intact bits of the internals and the energy cells with me in case they came in useful.  
  
Unfortunately I didn’t find any more stim-packs, just another hit of Jet, a few water bottles filled with liquid of dubious quality, and some dried meat. I kept it all and stashed the loot in my backpack.  
  
So now I had four guns, a combat knife, three security batons, some armour, and some food. All I had to do to get it was kill four people. I shook my head to drive away the thoughts and turned back to the bodies. I’d need to do something about them soon.  
  
***  
  
It took longer than I would have liked to dig a grave, thankfully I found a rusted old shovel near where Preston had died so I didn’t need to dig with my hands. I felt bad about digging what amounted to a mass grave and consigning the victims with the raiders, but there was little else I could do unless I wanted to spend a few days digging graves, which I really didn’t. On top of that there was no way I could tell the difference between the raiders and their victims due to them all being stripped by the people I killed last night. I figured about half of the twenty five bodies I was actually burying were raiders but I could not be sure, so in they all went.  
  
One of the more horrifying aspects of burying the dead was collecting the various parts of the dead as well. Only a handful of the bodies were intact, and those few still showed evidence of the fight with the Deathclaw, huge slashes in their bodies, massive teeth marks and missing chunks of flesh. It must have been a hell of a fight.  
  
I’d never been very religious, if someone forced the issue I’d admit to be a cultural Christian who was pretty sure there was some divine force out there but he/she/it didn’t really get involved in our lives. Letting us apes blunder around and make mistakes until we _finally_ learned our fucking lessons. Nethertheless I said a short prayer over the grave once I filled it in, better to be safe than sorry and all that, before turning back to the town.  
  
It was then that I got another shock. I was coming back into the town and I noticed a faded sign on a building about twenty meters away from me, it wasn’t anything all that interesting, just the standard thing about cleaning up after your pets. What did shock me was that I could _read_ it.  
  
Now obviously I could read, I’d been doing it for decades, no what shocked me was that I could read anything at that distance in the first place. I’d always been a little nearsighted but after I got that infection in my leg I went almost blind thanks to nerve damage and couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me without things blurring. I’d learned to work around it for the most part and I suppose the shock of showing up in the Fallout universe had prevented me from noticing it before, but I _see_ again, really see, not the half hell I’d been in for years.  
  
In fact if I had to guess I’d say I had 20/20 vision. It was freaky as hell, almost as bad as the mental downloads I got from touching weapons. I probably should have sat down and thought about it more, but honestly? I was too busy dancing around giggling like a schoolgirl.  
  
I could _see!_  
  
***  
  
Around noon I’d finished burying the dead, gathering as much gear as I could, and other than exploring the buildings there wasn’t much more I could accomplish in this ghost town. So I sat by the fire thinking about what to do next. I’d looked over my map and I was seriously considering going south-east towards Boston proper, there would _have_ to be people around there. Real people, not the raider scum I’d encountered so far, if only because a city was ripe for setting up shop.  
  
It was also my best bet for finding this ‘Ronnie Shaw’ that I promised Preston I’d look for. Fucked if I know how I’d manage that, but I did promise it, and it was another lead towards the people who killed everyone in the Vault and kidnapped the kid.  
  
With a glance up at the sun, I made my choice, I’d keep going. If I went directly south and little to the east I’d come to a main highway, and from there to a town called Cambridge that would lead me into Boston proper. For a moment I was tempted to take another road towards another smaller town called Lexington, but that would add some time to my trip and frankly I was tired of walking. The path I was looking at was about sixteen miles, which if my shitty math was right was about twenty five kilometers in real measurements.  
  
I doubted I’d be able to cover it in one afternoon, but a day or so of walking and I’d be there.  
  
***  
  
I’d been walking about for about three hours, only breaking for a snack and to deal with the rumble in my guts caused by either my breakfast or the water I drank alongside it, when I heard a gunshot in the distance. I dashed off the road and drew my pistol in a flash, looking for any threat.  
  
There wasn’t anything, the shot was a long way off based on the echo, but all the same it meant that there were armed people about. Given that anyone with sense would be armed in this world it didn’t mean they were hostile, but it did mean I’d have to be careful.  
  
I crept along the edge of the road for about fifteen minutes, my eyes scanning every which way as I strained my ears listening for any movement. There we no more gunshots, and the only sounds I heard were the typical ones of nature, bugs buzzing, the wind in the trees, that sort of thing.  
  
Just when I was starting to think that the gunshot was even further off than I estimated I heard a voice in the distance.  
  
“Get off your lazy ass Patrick and clean that bird.” It was a woman, her voice rough with an undertone of caring in it, “I didn’t pay off Wolfgang so you could lay around all day feeling sorry for yourself.”  
  
If there was a reply from this ‘Patrick’ I didn’t hear it, still I crept closer, keeping my gun at the ready just incase they were hostiles. I really hoped they weren’t and not just because I wanted to avoid another fight, I really needed to talk to someone. Anyone, well anyone not trying to kill me, because I was very worried that if I didn’t start making human connections soon I was going to snap and become _worse_ than the raiders I killed the night before.  
  
Just around a bend in the road I spotted the people in question, they were standing outside a building. If I had to give it a name I’d say it was a cross between a stereotypical 50s American diner and something out of Mad Max. The main body of the building looked to be made out of metal and concrete, a rectangle with rounded edges with a bit jutting up at one end with a faded sign proclaiming it to be Drumlin Diner. The Mad Max part came in from the bits of rusted metal covering the windows and the mini-palisade around the building itself made from all sorts of junk.  
  
My eyes were drawn to a large white symbol drawn near the entrance to the diner, it was a triangle with a sloppy J in the middle and two hash marks next to it near the bottom.  
  
In the yard itself were the woman, she looked to be in her fifties, but given the world I was in that could mean she was twenty-five, and standing next to a young man, Patrick I assumed, who looked to be about eighteen if I had to guess. She had an old shotgun slung over her shoulder and was pressing a black bird into the young man’s shaking hands.  
  
With a deep breath I steadied myself and lowered my weapon, but I didn’t put it away, and stepped out into the clear.  
  
“Hello.” I said, keeping my gun pointed away from them, and my other hand raised in a gesture of peace.  
  
The man, boy really, yelped and scurried behind the woman who shoved him back even as she pulled her weapon free with startling speed.  
  
“Woah!” I said, taking a step back, “I’m not looking for a fight.”  
  
“I don’t know you.” The woman said with narrowed eyes, but she didn’t point her weapon at me so there was that at least. “You here to trade?”  
  
“Yes?” I replied hesitantly, I hadn’t really planned on it, but it sounded decent, especially if it would get the crazy lady to calm down a little. “I’m Sam, Sam Parker.”  
  
“I’m Trudy and this is my boy Patrick.” The woman, Trudy, grunted, lowering her weapon slightly, eying me in a disturbing fashion, “Well come on, I don’t have all day.” She turned and walked inside the diner.  
  
Carefully I slipped my pistol into my belt, I really needed to fashion a proper holster soon, and followed. As I did I glanced at Patrick who was spaced out and looking off into the distance, the bird still in his hands. Dude creeped me out but seemed mostly harmless.  
  
The inside of the building was dark and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust but when they did I wasn’t impressed. The place was disgusting, soiled mattresses laying on the ground near the back wall, crap all over the tables and shelves.  
  
“Don’t go judging me boyo. It ain't much, but it’s my home.” Trudy said from behind the counter where she had set her shotgun down. It looked like she’d read my expression and hadn’t liked it much.  
  
“I’m sorry.” I said, shaking my head, “Just really not use to this area yet.”  
  
“You a Vault-Dweller?” She asked, nodding towards my jump suit.  
  
“No.” I replied without hesitation, I’d already decided that if anyone asked that I’d lie, because I was an easy mark already, there was no point telling people that and making it obvious. “Got the suit in a trade back home.”  
  
“You talk funny.” Trudy said with a grunt, “Where you from?”  
  
“Up North.” I said vaguely, another lie I’d planned out in advanced. It was doubtful anyone would recognise my Australian accent and frankly I didn’t want to get into talking how I ended up in America. I knew from the games that there was some sort of trans-atlantic trade between Europe and North America, otherwise where did the British dude from FO3 come from, but the Vikings managed that a thousand years ago. Trans-pacific was on the other hand much more unlikely.  
  
“How do you want to do this?” I asked, having zero clue how commerce actually worked in this ‘real’ version of a fictional setting I’d spent far too many hours exploring from the comfort of my own home.  
  
“You show me what you’re wanting to trade and I’ll tell you what I think it's worth.” Trudy said curtly, “Or if you’ve got caps you can browse my wares.”  
  
I nodded and unslung my pack, reaching in slowly with my left hand I withdrew the pistol I’d taken off the raider, I was keeping the rifle, two of the security batons, and the second best of the two N99 pistols I’d gotten in the vault, and placed them on the counter.  
  
“I can offer you maybe... sixty caps.” Trudy said, eyeing the weapons laid on the counter.  
  
I narrowed my eyes at the old woman, if there was one thing spending several years writing self-insert fanfiction does it teaches you to analyze your faults. Alex might be shit at making deals and bartering but I _learnt_ from all the jokes people made, and unlike him I didn’t have the cheat codes for the multiverse. What I had in my bag were the only resources I had in this shitsack world and I’d be damned before I wasted them.  
  
“Bullshit. They’re worth at least two hundred caps.” I replied flatly, tripling her offer and then some. Worst case she tried to rob me, but I figured I could take her if it came to that, best case she actually raised her price a little. I had some caps I took off the raiders but I doubted they’d go far.  
  
Trudy returned my expression, narrowing her eyes and her lips going flat.  
  
“Eighty caps.” She said shaking her head.  
  
“One eighty.” I countered mimicking her actions and shaking my own head.  
  
We went in this vein for a while, haggling back and forth, until we edged towards a price we could both tolerate, ninety caps and some of her goods. I managed to snag a small package of food, enough to last me several days, some water cleaning tablets that were supposed to cut the radiation down considerably while also killing any bacteria and other fun stuff living in it, a box of 10mm ammo, some gun oil, and a pair of leather gloves that had seen better days.  
  
I also snagged a roll up swag, or what Americans call an outdoor sleeping bag I guess, but to me they’ll always be a swag. No more sleeping on the dirt for me! Yay!  
  
The best thing I got however was a tattered bit of paper with crudely drawn symbols all over it. A map. I was warned it wasn’t complete and that things changed quickly in the area so I shouldn’t rely on it, but still at least now I knew of a major settlement, Diamond City.  
  
I really wanted a few more stim-packs or failing that some RadX or RadAwan, but she simply didn’t have any, having sold the last of them to a travelling caravan just two days before. I suspected she had some stored away for personal use by her and her son, but if so she wasn’t going to sell them.  
  
“Pleasure doing business with you.” I said with a smile as I finished packing away my new stuff into my bag.  
  
Trudy just grunted as she put the weapons down behind the counter, she looked to be still annoyed that I didn’t want to part with the magazines for the guns.  
  
“So I was wondering, it’s just you and your son here, so how do you stop raiders from just taking all your stuff?” I asked.  
  
“You planning on trying?” Trudy asked, her hand drifting towards the shotgun as she glared at me.  
  
“What? No!” I said my eyes going wide as I raised my hands, “Just wondering is all, I mean most places have guards and weapons and stuff.”  
  
“What? Can’t you read Raider-Sign?” She asked, giving me another odd look, “You stupid or something?”  
  
“What’s Raider-Sign?” I asked, “You mean that white painting on the outside?”  
  
“Yeah.” Trudy grunted, “It means we’re under Jared’s protection, we give him a taste and he kills any fucker who tries anything.”  
  
“Huh.” I said, I mean it made sense, even if Raiders were drug addicted scumbags they couldn’t do that _all_ the time. So running an extortion racket it was then. That was smart. “Who’s Jared?” I’d heard the name before, the night before when the raiders I’d killed had been talking.  
  
“He heads one of the biggest gangs around here, based up at the old Corvega assembly plant down Lexington way.” Trudy said shaking her head, like she couldn’t believe the stupid questions I was asking, “Now are we done or what because I need to put supper on, and no you can’t stay.”  
  
“That’s fine.” I said through clenched teeth, “I wasn’t going to ask, I need to get a move on.” I paused, half tempted to pump her for more information before deciding it wasn’t worth it. For all that I had been craving human contact I wanted nothing more right now to be on my own again. Shaking my head I left, pretending not to hear the woman muttering to herself about how she couldn’t catch a break.  
  
***  
  
After leaving the diner I ducked into the woods and moved through them for a while. I didn’t trust that woman not to betray me to her raider protectors so I kept off the main roads for a while. It slowed me down considerably but paranoia is its own reward.  
  
I kept that way until the sun was drifting down before I made camp. I wasn’t sure about setting a fire, but it was cold enough during the daytime and while a fire might attract _human_ predators it should keep animals away so I decided to go with it. Still I made it fairly small, in a ditch by the side of the road in a huddle of trees so that the light wouldn’t spread very far.  
  
As I sat there in the gathering dark, munching on a bit of dried meat that I had taken off the raiders and a piece of fruit that I had purchased off Trudy, I just stared into the dark wondering what the hell I was doing. I’d been in this world for less than a week and I’d just been moving from one event to another with no real plan, just vague goals.  
  
Find out what happened to me, find the people who killed all those people in the vault and stole the baby, and now find this Ronnie Shaw. That seemed like a lot of finding to do without much clue as to how to actually go about it.  
  
I wasn’t a soldier. I wasn’t a cop. I wasn’t even a volunteer firefighter. I was an ex-programmer with some basic survival skills that were only half applicable in the strange _American_ environment I found myself in. It was so frustrating to be hoarding and rationing food when I _knew_ that if I had been in the Australian bush, even in the wake of a nuclear war, that I could have been able to feed myself with _ease_. But there was so much I didn’t know about this place I found myself in.  
  
For a brief moment I wished I’d been dropped into the blasted hellscape of the Capital Wasteland prior to Fallout 3, at least that way I would have known the location of some supplies and more importantly who to trust.  
  
That thought lead me to something I had been consciously avoiding thinking about since I woke up and first discovered where I was. The pressure had only increased as I discovered the innate understanding of weapons I touched and then the realisation that my eyes had been fixed. Who or what had done this to me? Why had they done it? Was it some sort of game? An experiment? Or some benevolent action that would only be obvious centuries after the fact?  
  
I wished briefly that my entire adventure had started with a conversation in a void with some Random Omnipotent Bastard that laid out everything nice and neatly for me. It would have been so helpful, and maybe I could have managed to finagle some nifty powers in the conversation. But oh no, I got the mysterious force bollocks and a minor tune-up combined with some minor skills.  
  
That of course wasn’t to say I was ungrateful to have my eyesight back in full working order, if anything I was ecstatic about it. A little embarrassed it had taken me four days to realise it, but still pretty bloody happy. Then again it had taken me _months_ to realise that I was going blind in the first place, it just happened so slowly, and people naturally adapt to small changes in their bodies.  
  
Speaking of bodies was it too much to ask that whoever did this to also bulked me up a little? I wasn’t asking for much, just some of the muscle I had when I was younger, so I didn’t feel so bloody tired after walking so much. Of course while they were doing that maybe they could have installed a flamethrower in my dick or something equally stupid and overpowered.  
  
I glared up at the sky, directing all my hate at the entity or entities that had dumped me in this shitsack world. I’d much rather be home, snacking on biscuits and drinking coffee while giggling at bad youtube videos.  
  
After a few minutes I dropped my gaze back to the fire, that line of thinking was getting me nowhere. I wasn’t going to give up on finding out how I got to the Fallout universe, but it could wait until I was in a better position.  
  
On that note I decided maybe if I could improve the rifle I got off the raiders, after all I had plenty of rounds for it and I’d always been better with rifles than pistols. So I pulled my tools out and untied the rifle from where it was on the side of my pack and started to get to work using the firelight.  
  
It was in terrible condition, the asshat who had it before me clearly didn’t know shit about looking after firearms. Frankly I was amazed it hadn’t exploded on Gasmask when he had been shooting at me there was that much dirt, old powder residue and other random bits of crap in the barrel.  
  
Breaking it down I cleaned and oiled the receiver after using the file on my multi-tool to work off some of the rougher bits in a way that should smooth out the semi-automatic’s action. I briefly considered converting it to full-auto but decided against it, I wasn’t sure the barrel could take it.  
  
Looking over the crude wooden stock I sneered and shook my head. It was utterly pathetic, I’d seen better products come out of year seven woodworking classes. I got out my hammer, knife, and one of the screwdrivers and started chipping away at the wood.  
  
When I’d finished the moon was high in the sky and I was totally knackered but I had a much more functional and ergonomic rifle chambered in .38 calibre rounds. It was still rough of course, I didn’t really have all the tools I’d like, and I really wished I had some sand-paper, but it was better than what I started with. I’d test the accuracy and work on the sights in the morning.  
  
***  
  
The next day I was back on the road shortly after sunrise, after testing out the rifle and being somewhat happy with the results. Around mid-morning I could see a town in the distance, just below the hill I was standing on. Cambridge according to the map on both the map I’d purchased and the one on my Pip-boy.  
  
It was while I was looking over the map and deciding on a route that I noticed that one of the lights was blinking, the one just under the word ‘Radio’. With a frown I tuned the knob to that bit of the Pip-boy’s OS and let it auto-scan for a channel.  
  
_“..Scribe Haylen of Reconnaissance Squad Gladius to any unit in transmission range. Authorization Arx. Ferrum. Nine. Five. Our unit has sustained casualties and we're running low on supplies. We're requesting support or evac from our position at Cambridge Police Station. Automated message repeating... This is Scribe Haylen”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So not a ton of actions in this one, but Sam actually got to speak to someone! And they didn’t die! Progress!  
> Thanks go to Mizu for his help betaing. You rock.


	5. Chaos in Cambridge

_“..Scribe Haylen of Reconnaissance Squad Gladius to any unit in transmission range. Authorization Arx. Ferrum. Nine. Five. Our unit has sustained casualties and we're running low on supplies. We're requesting support or evac from our position at Cambridge Police Station. Automated message repeating... This is Scribe Haylen”_  
  
I stared at my Pip-boy in shock as the message repeated itself several times, the voice tinny and crackly, but according to the time-stamp on the subcarrier that my device picked up it had started broadcasting less than six hours ago.  
  
It wasn’t getting a radio transmission that shocked me, not really, instead was the words on it. _Scribe_ Haylen. Scribe was a _Brotherhood_ rank. As in the Brotherhood of Steel. That could be a very good thing or an incredibly bad thing depending on the faction this Scribe was affiliated with.  
  
There were two major Brotherhood factions, one made up of paternalistic techno-fascists with a side order of xenophobia, the other was made up of xenophobic techno-fascists with an extra helping of full on respect-my-authoritah type control issues. Both sides fetishised their tech pretty badly and were _really_ into the whole feudal knights thing.  
  
Born out of the remnants of the United States military the Brotherhood was convinced that technology had lead to the downfall of mankind, and yeah given the nuclear war they might have a point, but they were also convinced only _they_ could be trusted with said technology. On one hand at least they weren’t full on luddites, which was a plus, but on the other hand even the ‘nice’ faction, the so-called East Coast Brotherhood, were still pretty fascist.  
  
Fascism, like communism, is one of those words that is used a lot by people who really don’t understand it. At its core fascism is about control, pure and complete control on the part of the state, in this case the Brotherhood, over every aspect of life from the planting of crops to the training of an army, all for the betterment of the state. Note I said _state_ not people. People are just cogs in the machine of state in the fascist world-view. The state is everything.  
  
The Brotherhood was obsessed with control. Control over technology, which they viewed as dangerous. Control over the people, who they viewed as ignorant. Even controlling what they defined as human.  
  
So yeah while I hoped the people on the radio were the East Coast faction, which was pretty likely based on where we both were, because they were the more palatable of the two, it didn’t mean they were to be approached without extreme caution. After all Lyons might have been pretty chill and his daughter was awesome but who knows if they were still running things. Hell who knows who ‘won’ Fallout 3 anyway. The fucking Enclave could be coming over the hill any minute for all I knew.  
  
Still I figured I needed to at least go and see if I could help them out, mostly because answering a distress call is the moral thing to do, but I’d be lying if a little voice inside my head wasn’t squealing like a little child on his birthday, repeatedly chanting _‘Power Armour. Power Armour. Power Amour. Gotta get me some Power Armour.’_  
  
***  
  
I heard the fight long before I saw any evidence of it with my own two eyes. I was entering the outskirts of Cambridge when I heard the echos of a boom, a lot of boom. It was like no weapon I’d ever heard with my own ears yet I _knew_ that it was a laser rifle. A General Atomics International AER9 laser rifle with a slightly out of tune photon agitator lowering the efficiency by three percent by the sound of it.  
  
I froze as the information filled my head. A moment before I didn’t even know what a photon agitator _was_ apart from sounding like something out of Star Trek, yet now I could _build_ one if you handed me the proper parts.  
  
“Fucking universe.” I muttered to myself, shaking my head as I angled towards the town ahead of me in the road, I had my pistol at my belt and my new rifle in my hands with all six magazines loaded and ready to go. I briefly considered leaving my pack behind like I did with the raiders but I figured I might need to run like hell from whatever was giving the Power Armoured Goonsquad a fight and I didn’t want to start from scratch _again_ so I kept it with me. I’d actually gotten used to the weight on my back.  
  
I walked into the town cautiously, my rifle at the ready the entire time, and almost turned back more than once as I saw dead bodies lying on the ground. A few of them were raiders, the same mismashed armour and crude weapons, and they had died badly. Their bodies looked like they’d been mauled by rabid dogs but I knew better based on the vast majority of bodies filling the area.  
  
Ghouls. Ferals by the look of it. They were wearing tattered and rotten clothing, their skin like dry leather and pock-marked with pus and other fluids leaking outwards. Bits of their bodies, mostly the soft tissue like the nose, had long ago rotted off, and more than a few had been blown in half by heavy firepower.  
  
It was one thing to see them in a game and smirk about how silly the idea of radiation zombies was, for one thing radiation _really_ didn’t work that way, but seeing them up close was something completely different.  
  
These were real people turned into monsters by exposure to the result of a global nuclear exchange, possibly with a little help from the US Government and their biowarfare experiments, or maybe a preexisting genetic trait activated by radiation, it depended on which theory you went with. Some were lucky enough to keep their minds, but most weren’t, condemned to a near eternal life of madness, capable subsisting off radiation while still craving human sustenance and contact, forming packs of ravening beasts that plagues the wasteland.  
  
I froze for a moment as I turned a corner and I saw my first living ghoul, it was hunched over like an ape and shoving meat into its face. Meat from a dead raider’s stomach. My gord rose and I trembled as I watched it feast. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female despite the state of the clothing, there was no fat, no muscle, just an almost skeletal frame with skin pulled tight over it.  
  
Then it turned its head towards me, clearly having heard me, and I acted. My rifle snapped up to my shoulder and I sighted on it in one smooth move, my new knowledge and skills combining with a lifetime of real experience. Experience gained from firing my first firearm at the age of four, of hunting with my family most of my childhood, of watching my aunt as she trained for the Olympics only for her dreams to be crushed when she got sick, of competing in competitions all over Victoria’s South West and winning more than a few.  
  
I fired once, the ghoul was perhaps twenty meters away - a piddling distance-, the action on the rifle grabbing a little but nothing compared to what it had been like before I had worked on it. The bullet erupted from the barrel and the newly rounded stock lightly kicked my shoulder. It flew true, if a little low, and impacted the ghoul in the throat, ripping a chunk of flesh out and sending the poor creature to the ground in a puddle of its own blood.  
  
I didn’t have time to dwell on the death of the pitiful creature however as the sound of my rifle’s shot drew the attention of its pack. Bodies that I previously thought dead started clambering to their feet with groans and another dropped from the upper window of a house on the left.  
  
Setting my feet I swung my rifle up and started firing. You would be amazed at how fast you can fire a semi-automatic rifle if you put your mind to it, and for the most part it is generally more efficient than a fully automatic. However at that moment I really wished I’d converted the rifle over, and managed to get my hands on some ammo belts and a water cooling system.  
  
Two ghouls dropped to my first two shots, one spinning and dropping when I blew a hole in its shoulder, the other’s head popping like a ripe melon when the .38 calibre bullet slammed home right between the eyes.  
  
The ghouls got closer and I missed one shot, then another, before dropping the closest and spinning to fire two rounds into the chest of the largest of the pack. Then one was ontop of me. I brought up my rifle to keep between us as it crashed into me, driving us down to the ground, the ghoul clawing and snapping at my face like a demented cat about to get a bath.  
  
I pulled the same trick as I did with Bruv and slammed my forehead into its face. It didn’t work nearly as well when there wasn’t any soft squishy bits to break. In fact I think it hurt me more than it, but for all its feral strength I was much larger than the thing of skin and bones. Leverage is king. As the wise man said, give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I’ll rock the world.  
  
I managed to get the ghoul off me with a shove before rolling clear and snapping my rifle up and putting three in its body. I spun at a noise to my right and managed to shoot the leg of another ghoul that was charging at me, taking it right off. I went to put another round in its head to put it out of its misery but my rifle clicked empty. Out of ammo.  
  
Swearing I released the magazine and let it drop to the ground, snagging another off my belt and slamming it home. I snapped the bolt back to load the first round and killed the bastard beast still trying to claw its way towards me.  
  
I stood there among the dead ghouls for a long moment, my breathing heavy, as I looked for new threats. It seemed like I had killed off the entire pack, but who knew how many more were in area. I snagged up the discarded magazine when the sounds of the laser rifle boomed through the air again.  
  
Right, Brotherhood of Steel. Well at least I had a direction now.  
  
***  
  
After two more encounters with the local Ghoul population, thankfully lone stragglers heading towards the sound of battle, I managed to find my target. It was imposing and based upon the number of dead bodies, both Ghoul and Raider, laying around the outside the battle had been going on for a good while.  
  
The police station was a squat multistory building that looked more like a bunker than any cop-shop I’d seen before. Most of the newer ones in rural Australia looked like houses, or maybe a modern office, deliberately designed to to be welcoming. Obviously the people responsible for the Cambridge police station had been going for a more authoritarian vibe.  
  
Around the front were barricades of junk and scrap metal with old tires filling gaps with two entrances that looked to have been battered down by the sheer weight of the ghouls. I still couldn’t get a good look at the defenders, but the roar of the laser rifle told me they were still fighting.  
  
I considered how to go about helping for a moment. Getting in there would work I suppose, but it would leave me trapped and just give the defenders another gun. On the other hand there were a number of buildings nearby that would give me a nice perch to snipe downwards and I could pick off the more troublesome attackers.  
  
Shouldering my rifle and hoping the makeshift sling I’d made out of old lab coat and bits of raider clothing would hold, I jumped up and grabbed hold of a metal fire escape. I hung there swinging for a moment and feeling like a fool, of course it was rusted in place, then it gave up and came down with an almighty crash.  
  
Climbing up the rusted metal ladder I was really glad I’d got my gloves, I wasn’t sure when I got my last tetanus booster but it had been a while and I wasn’t keen on dying that way. Hell I wasn’t keen on dying _no matter the method._  
  
I managed to make it up to a third floor fire escape before I couldn’t get any higher, the rest of the escape was broken in too many places for me to risk. After a quick glance inside the room at my back to make sure I wasn’t going to be ambushed I gently knelt down and placed my rifle on the railing, surveying the combat going on beneath me.  
  
I got my first good look at a real life Brotherhood of Steel warrior, I didn’t know if he was a Knight or a Paladin, but he was kicking ass. There in his Power Armour he stood on the stairs of the police station like Horatius at the bridge, Ghouls dead at his feet, wounded companions at his back depending on his protection.  
  
A mammoth beast of a man, his armour standing almost two and a half meters tall. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, which is how I knew he was a man, his short cropped hair and snarling visage as he pulped a Ghoul’s head with a swing of his mighty fist even as he fired off another shot into the charging pack.  
  
It was easy to see why the T-51b had turned the tide of the Sino-American war if this was the sort of carnage a single man could do against a veritable horde of enemies. Maybe he didn’t even really need my help, there were dozens, perhaps hundreds of Ghouls charging at him blindly.  
  
I spotted them crawling out of the storm drains and basements of buildings, so someone must have woken up a nest of the hibernating unfortunates, but even if the Brotherhood warrior might be safe from the onslaught, his companions weren’t so well equipped and one of them was already down, the other, a woman from what I could see, patching him up. I wondered why they didn’t just retreat inside the police station and leave power armoured man to slaughter them without fear for his friend’s safety, but perhaps there was something I wasn’t aware of.  
  
Shaking myself out of my introspection I sighted down on one of the Ghouls, this one wearing tattered armour of some sort, that was showing some feral cunning and attempting to flank the Brotherhood team. I fired once, cursing as the bullet impacted the Ghoul in the spine just below the neck. It was still a kill, I hoped, but I’d been aiming for head as I didn’t know just how much damage the radiation zombies could take.  
  
The Brotherhood soldier snapped his head in my direction, his rifle flying up. I held my trigger hand and sat still, hoping I wasn't about to be boiled inside my own skin. Our eyes locked for a long moment and then he nodded once, firmly, before turning back to the fight.  
  
I breathed a sigh of relief and went back to looking for targets. I targeted a little sucker, he couldn’t have been more than one sixty if he was a centimeter, but he was _fast_. The first shot missed by a wide margin as he unexpectedly swerved, the second missed only by a little bit, impacting on the wall behind him. The third shot struck him in the gut and he staggered. The fourth and fifth shots put him down for good.  
  
Swiveling my rifle slightly I fired once, dropping another Ghoul that had been charging the defenders, putting the round right in the back of its head. I hadn’t realised that the height advantage might also be a disadvantage as I had to be careful where my shots would go afterwards, after all I was shooting _towards_ the people I suppose to be helping.  
  
Quickly changing the magazine in my rifle, I really needed to get something that held more than twelve rounds, I set back to thinning the herd. The defender was taking down far more than me, but I was still making an impact and by picking my targets I was keeping his friends safe so he could concentrate on the bulk of the horde.  
  
There were just so many of them! Even if I used every round I had and killed one with each there would be still more left. Where were they coming from? Most were coming up from the underground, out of what looked like a subway station, were they people trapped underground when the bombs fell decades or centuries ago? Trapped underground all that time, slowly going mad? What had disturbed them? Who had let them out?  
  
Even as I questioned their origins I kept firing, getting into a rhythm, an almost zen-like state that I had once reached while target shooting. Fire, target, fire, target, repeat until reload then start again. I won't claim to be a world class shot, but I was above average and it wasn’t like the distances were all that challenging. I’d shot rabbits are much greater range, and ghouls were much larger and slower than the furred plague that infested my homeland.  
  
Finally the tide seemed to slow, and just as well as I slammed home my last magazine, I’d burnt through almost my entire supply of .38 ammunition, I had eleven rounds left. Fifty nine shots fired, I wouldn’t claim to have killed nearly as many Ghouls, but at least twenty of the _creatures_ dead on the ground were that way thanks to me.  
  
My arms were strained and sore, swept dripped down my face and my vault suit was soaked with it as well. Even a properly made rifle is heavy and the one I had was anything but, but it was more the mental exhaustion of the combat that had drained me.  
  
The Brotherhood warrior seemed to be feeling the same, as while his form was still standing proud but I doubted his armour _could_ slump; his face showed it as he looked up at me. He’d finished off the last few stragglers on his own.  
  
I guess it was time to go meet the locals.  
  
***  
  
It took me a while to get down from my perch, my arms felt like rubber and I didn’t really want to fall while climbing down so I took my time. I tried to swing myself down the ladder gently, but my hands slipped and I landed hard on my backside when I did. I grunted in pain and struggled to my feet wishing I’d dropped my backpack down instead of wearing it.  
  
I slung my rifle and drew my pistol, I had a lot more 10mm ammo than I did .38 after all, and headed towards the police station. It was actually hard to get there, since there was a literal carpet of dead bodies between it and me.  
  
“Identify yourself.” A voice barked as I entered the junk-barrier ringed courtyard of the police station. The Brotherhood warrior was still standing on the stone stairs, his laser rifle in his hands, and the other two were up near the doors.  
  
“Sam Parker.” I replied, my voice rough, but I carefully kept my pistol at my side and pointed away so I didn’t seem a threat. Not that I was, apart from managing a headshot on the unhelmeted man there wasn’t much I could do against someone in Power Armour, not with the little peashooter I had. He on the other hand could burn me down with that laser rifle without much issue.  
  
“State your intentions!” The armoured man barked again and I got annoyed. I risked my life, used up most of my ammo, and he was treating me like this? Prick.  
  
“I heard your distress signal and came to help.” I snapped back, “If this is the thanks I get I should have let the fucking Ghouls eat you.” I shook my head in disgust and turned to walk away. Sod this for a game of soldiers.  
  
“Wait.” The man said, his tone moderating, “I’m sorry. I’m Paladin Danse, thank you for your assistance.”  
  
I paused, I was still considering just walking off. There were raiders back the way I came, well dead raiders, and there was looting to be done. Maybe they would have food that didn’t taste like shit and I needed more ammo. Still I had went out of my way to help these people and I kind of wanted to talk to them, find out what _year_ it was at least.  
  
“You’re welcome.” I said before turning back to face Paladin Danse, “What is the Brotherhood of Steel doing in this hellhole?”  
  
“Classified.” Danse snapped before pausing and shaking his head, “I’m sorry, that was rude of me, you went out of your way to help us. We’re a reconnaissance team on a scouting mission.”  
  
I nodded, this dude was even less socially apt than I was and that was saying something, but still I supposed I could forgive that since he had likely been fighting those ferals long before I showed up. I noticed the two people up on the small landing and frowned.  
  
“Are your mates going to be alright?” I asked, jutting my chin towards them.  
  
“Scribe Haylen, how is Knight Rhys?” Danse asked, turning his head slightly to look at them. He clearly didn’t trust me and didn’t want to turn his back, then again this was the wasteland so I really couldn’t blame him.  
  
“He’ll be fine once I get a stimpack in him and bandage up his rips.” The woman, Haylen, called out. It was her voice I’d heard on the radio, the man under her care give a grunt of pain as she did something to his chest, “Oh hush you big baby, it’s your own fault for trying to tackle that Ghoul.”  
  
“I was trying to save your life.” Rhys replied in a pained voice, his face white as chalk. I’d had cracked ribs before myself, they were nothing to sneeze at. In fact sneezing was damn near like getting set on fire.  
  
“I’m a big girl Rhys, I can look after myself.” Haylen said as she helped the young man stand. “I’ll take him inside and see about those ribs.” She said to Danse.  
  
“Very well.” The Paladin replied, before turning back to me, “Once again, thank you for your aid.”  
  
“I’m sure you’d have managed on your own.” I said with a shrug, it was the truth really, the other two might have been clawed to death but I didn’t see how the Ghouls could get at the big guy not unless they got at his unprotected head. Seriously what sort of idiot goes into battle without a helmet if he can avoid it.  
  
“Yes, but who knows at what cost.” Danse said, his thoughts obviously paralleling my own as he glanced at the pair heading inside the station. “Our supplies are limited but you are welcome to join us for a meal at least.”  
  
“Thank you.” I said with a nod and followed the man inside.  
  
***  
  
A short time later I was seated on a rickety old chair in the station munching on some sort of bread, it was hard and hurt my teeth, but it was the first bread I’d had since waking up in this god-forsaken world so I was wolfing it down.  
  
Danse was slumped against a wall, having locked the legs of his armour so he could relax inside it and munching on his own bread as he watched Haylan wrap a bandage around Rhys’ chest.  
  
“Thanks for this.” I said between mouthfuls, “Been a while since I had a decent meal.”  
  
“You’re welcome.” Danse replied, “Where are you from? I gather based on your accent you're not from the Commonwealth.”  
  
“Place up north.” I said with a shrug, going with my standard lie, “Small community called Rockcliff. I was working on a fishing boat that hit a storm and I ended up shipwrecked.” I was sticking to things I actually knew, there had been one season back home when I was a teenager that I actually worked the fishing trawlers that spent part of the year in my hometown. “I don’t know how long I drifted but eventually I washed up on the coast. I’ve been trying to find my way to civilisation ever since.”  
  
“Civilization around here? Hah! Not that you’d know it if you saw it.” Rhys said with a sneer, yelping slightly when Haylan pulled the wrap tight and gave him a glare. For my part I just ignored the dickhead. Seriously guy was a pill, he’d been making little cracks like that since I’d came inside, but the others seemed chill and they’d given me food so I was willing to put up with it.  
  
“So what’s the local date? Would you happen to know?” I asked innocently, “I’ve lost track and we don’t really use the old calendar back home anyway.”  
  
“October the twenty-eighth, 2287.” Scribe Haylan supplied cheerfully as she helped Rhys put his top back on and snagged her own meal.  
  
“Thanks.” I replied with a strained smile, taking another bite of the bread for cover. 2287. Not only was I in a different universe but somehow I’d been bumped over two hundred years ahead as well, well past all the events that I knew of. I mentally fretted for a few moments before deciding I could freak out later, when I was alone.  
  
“So what exactly got those Ghouls all riled up anyway? I haven’t heard of a horde of them that big before.” I asked, wanting to get the conversation going. Hell apart from a few locations in the games there hadn’t been swarms of the damn things.  
  
“I’m not sure.” Danse said pausing his own meal, “I do know there was a group of Raiders in town that were running a protection scheme, they left us alone and we returned the favour. Given the Ghouls were coming from underground perhaps the raiders disturbed a pre-war population that had been trapped in the old subway system.”  
  
“I didn’t think that was Brotherhood SOP.” I said frowning, “I mean from everything I’d heard about you guys I thought you were pretty down on raiders and all that.”  
  
“We are.” Danse said with a nod, his eyes focusing on me a bit more, “However we started off with seven people in the team and are down to just three. As much as it pains me to admit it would have been foolish to pick a fight that we couldn’t win.”  
  
“Makes sense.” I said with a shrug, who was I to blame them for looking after themselves, if the raiders hadn’t spotted me that night in Concord I’d have slinked off without confronting them.  
  
“You seem to know a lot about the Brotherhood.” Rhys said, his eyes silently accusing me.  
  
“You’re the first lot I’ve met,” I said with perfect honesty, “but I’ve heard the normal things you pick up if you listen. You guys are hardly subtle.” I threw a smirk at the arrogant prick who just grunted back at me.  
  
“What are your plans now?” Haylan asked, tilting her head to the side slightly.  
  
“No clue really. I’m a long way from home, so I figure I’ll try to find some place safe to rest and resupply before deciding what to do next.” I replied with a shrug, “Unless you mean my short term plans, in which case I was going to loot the raiders out there.”  
  
“Typical wastelander.” Rhys muttered with disgust, “Picking over dead bodies like a Radgull.”  
  
“I don’t actually enjoy it you know.” I snapped at him, my hackles rising, “But if it is looting the dead or starving to death I know which one I chose, and I did just use most of my ammo _helping you_.”  
  
“Rhys, enough.” Paladin Danse rumbled, “He came to help us when he was under no obligation to do so.”  
  
“I bet he was hoping we would be dead and he could steal our equipment.” Rhys sneered at me. I felt like punching him in the head and if there wasn’t a man in Power Armour sitting right next to me that might take exception to that I would have done just that. Sure if I was actually playing a game I’d have done that, but I _wasn’t_ in a game, this was my life now and I planned on it being a long bloody life.  
  
“I said enough!” Danse said emphatically, his voice low but intense, “If you are well enough to argue you are well enough to clean the weapons.”  
  
“But...” Rhys started to object.  
  
“Knight Rhys! You have your orders!” Danse said roughly, clapping his palms together, the noise of the two chunks of metal was like a thunderclap.  
  
The snarky prick got up from his chair and left, slowly, still holding his side as he did. If looks could kill the one he shot me would have burnt out a small island at least.  
  
“I’m sorry about him.” Danse said with a sigh after the other man was out of earshot, “This mission has been hard on all of us, Rhys is just looking for someone to blame, not that it excuses his behavior.”  
  
“It’s fine.” I said with a shrug. Strangely enough I meant it, I still wanted to punch Rhys in the face, but honestly I could get where he was coming from.  
  
“If you are done eating perhaps it would be wise if we started to gather supplies from outside while it is still light out.” Danse suggested.  
  
“What?” I said, my eyes going wide, did I hear that right? Was the Paladin actually offering to help me loot a bunch of dead bodies?  
  
“There is safety in numbers and you did assist us, so it is the least I can do to return the favour.” Danse said with a nod, “Now that the ghouls have been dealt with, I’m sure Scribe Haylan and Knight Rhys will capable of looking after themselves for a short time.  
  
“Sure boss, go have fun.” Haylan said cheerfully before getting up, “I better go check on Rhys anyway.”  
  
I considered the offer, even if he wanted a share of the loot I wasn’t going to turn down back up in the form of a dude in Power Armour, there might be more ghouls out there and I wanted to keep my internals internal.  
  
***  
  
It didn’t take us long to scavenge the few raiders I’d seen on my way to the police station, well I say us, but it was me doing the actual looting while Danse stood around looking intimidating and watching for threats. It’s kind of sad that I’m getting used to rooting around in the pockets of dead people, but I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to the smell. Fun fact, people shit themselves when they die, combine that with decomposition and you’ve got a lovely odor.  
  
There wasn’t any conversation either. Danse just didn’t seem like the chatty type. On the plus side he turned down my offer of a cut. I’m honestly not sure how to take that, but you know what, I need all the stuff I can get my hands on if I want to survive.  
  
Not that I found much, the raiders must have been poor sons of bitches. I got a couple more homemade weapons, a few more magazines for them, about fifty rounds of .38 calibre ammunition, a few knives, a stim-pack, another jet, some buffout, and an honest to goodness _rifle_. Not one of those pathetic things made out of scrap but something designed by actual gunsmiths and made in a factory. A Winchester one by the look of the faded maker’s mark, they always did make good weapons.  
  
Unfortunately the scope on it is totalled, the lenses smashed, so there is that, and I’ve only got limited ammo for it. But still maybe I can work something out, because it looked to be a hell of a lot more useful than the one I’ve been using, even if it is a bolt-action version. Then again speed isn’t everything, and a .308 packs a hell of a lot more punch than the .38s I’ve been playing with.  
  
“Parker, I have been thinking, if you are willing I have a mission that I think you might be suited for.” The Paladin said, speaking for the first time since we left the station earlier, as I finished up with the last body.  
  
Oh fuck me running, I was about to get roped into a quest, wasn't I?  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn writing Danse is hard. I’m still not even halfway sure I got his ‘voice’ right, I spent more time writing and rewriting that conversation than anything else I’ve done in this fic so far.
> 
> As always thanks go to Mizu for cleaning up my spelling and other mistakes.


	6. Mission Avoidable

“So let me see if I’ve got this straight.” I asked from where I was sitting on the steps of the Cambridge police station looking up at Paladin Danse standing in the courtyard like some demented statue, “You want me to go with you into some pre-war factory with god only knows what lurking inside to recover some bit of tech that might allow you to contact your people because apparently when sending out a recon team the Brotherhood doesn’t equip them with the means to call home.”  
  
“Our long range communications system was destroyed shortly after we arrived in the Commonwealth.” Danse corrected brusquely.  
  
“Oh that’s alright then.” I said sarcastically, “Still does that sum up what you are asking me to do? Because it sounds insane to me.”  
  
“If you require it, we can pay you.” Danse said with distaste.  
  
“First off,” I said pointing at myself, “not a merc. Secondly, even if I was the dead don’t need money and what you are suggesting sounds like a suicide mission, at least for me. You’ve got power armour, I’ve got what you see and that’s it.” I shook my head, “No mate, I’ve heard about what’s in those places. Insane robots, feral ghouls, you name it. After all if they were easy pickings someone would have cleaned it out decades ago.”  
  
“You raise a valid point.” Danse said with a nod of concession, “However you have shown skill and you would be acting as back up while I took point.”  
  
I shook my head again and slumped down a little, thinking about what I should do. My first instinct was to tell him to fuck off. It was one thing to go running around inside factories and abandoned buildings in the game, but I didn’t have a reload option in this strange world. What he was suggesting was dangerous and while I had been lucky so far I couldn’t expect that to last.  
  
On the other hand he and his team were the first people I’d run into that could maybe help me survive this hellhole and I didn’t want to blow my chances too soon. If I wanted their protection I’d need to make myself useful, altruists the Brotherhood were not. Not that I blamed them, this was a harsh world and you either pulled your weight or died in the dirt.  
  
“Look I’m not saying no,” I said slowly, “but I’m not saying yes either. Can I sleep on it?”  
  
“You’re cautious.” Danse said with an approving nod, “That’s good, yes, sleep on it for tonight, the Arc-Jet facility is several miles away and it would be better to hit it in daylight anyway. Get some sleep, I’ll expect your answer in the morning.”  
  
***  
  
I was still thinking about what I was going to tell Danse as I sat down to clean my weapon and go over the new loot I’d obtained during our scavenging trip. I’d been directed to an office near the back of the police station with a single boarded up window and just one door. I assume it was to make sure I couldn’t sneak up on anymore if I decided to get murder-stabby in the night. I should have been offended, but it was the wasteland and I was a relative unknown so I could hardly blame them.  
  
There was a knock on the door and Scribe Haylan poked her head inside, a wide smile on her face.  
  
“Hey, just seeing if you needed anything?” The Scribe asked in her cheerful manner.  
  
“All good here.” I replied with a smile, before frowning, “Unless you have some gun-oil you’d be willing to spare? I’m all out and I’d really like to give these babies a good clean.”  
  
“Sure, be right back.” Haylan said and ducked away, disappearing back into the gloom of the station. I was really starting to miss electric lights, it was one thing to rely on a camp-fire out in the wild but dammit, I shouldn’t need lamps inside buildings like some sort of savage. For one thing they were never bright enough. I vaguely remembered that there was a way around that, lime used as a backing I think, but it had a downside of being toxic as hell. Or I could be thinking of something completely different.  
  
I really wished I’d pay more attention to that time-travellers poster. I could make gunpowder, no self-respecting pyromaniac Australian growing up in the bush manages to make it through his teenage years without learning that little trick, but that and anfo bombs were about my limit. Chemistry had never been my strong suit. Or rather I’d been a lazy shit back in highschool. Honestly sometimes I wish I could time-travel just so I could go back and punch myself in the face for being such a berk.  
  
“Here you go.” Haylan said, popping back into the room and dropping a square black fabric bag down in front of me along with a tube of, hallelujah, high grade gun-oil. I didn’t recognise the brand, but I did recognise most of the ingredients and nodded in approval.  
  
“Thanks.” I said with a smile, using dirty weapons was just asking for trouble. I opened up the toolkit she’d dropped and my smile grew as I saw it was a full gun-clean kit complete with a two piece joinable cleaning rod, with both soft and hard brush attachments, and even a nice soft cleaning rag. “Really thanks.”  
  
“No problem.” Haylan said with a laugh. “I can recognise a fellow tech-head a mile away. That forlorn look on your face as you try to do what you can with limited supplies, its universal.”  
  
“I guess it is.” I replied with my own laugh. Oh god that felt good. I hadn’t laughed since I woke up in that damn vault. “Still I’d kill for a nice hot shower and some proper tea.”  
  
“Oh I know what you mean!” Haylan said taking a seat on the hard floor, crossing her legs, as I started cleaning out my new .308 rifle. “Not the tea, never had it myself, but the shower? Oh yeah.” She looked off into the distance dreamily. “There were some really good ones in the Scribe section of Adams AFB once we got the reactors back up and running, endless _clean_ hot water.”  
  
I nodded but inwardly frowned, well that suggested that the Brotherhood had beaten the Enclave like the drum and taken the old Air Force Base they’d been using during the DLC for Fallout 3. I wondered if the Lone Wanderer was still kicking around, or if he/she had carked it turning on the purifier. Unfortunately there was no good way to ask.  
  
“Not many places even have running water,” Haylan continued, giving me a shrew look, “where did you say you were from again?”  
  
“Rockcliff,” I answered without hesitation, I was really glad I’d chosen that name, it was easy to remember and somewhat factually accurate, there really was an area near my hometown called Rockcliff, “we’re pretty isolated, which can be a pain, but it also meant we rode out the Great War pretty well.”  
  
“It shows.” Haylan said, “You’re a lot more articulate than the average wastelander we run into. You almost sound like a Scribe.”  
  
“I wouldn’t say that.” I replied as I threaded the hard brush down the barrel of the rifle and gave it a twist, “I know a few tricks, but a lot of tech flies over my head.” As much as I was growing to like the woman she did belong to an organisation that had conducted purges against the ‘impure’ in the past and I wasn’t sure where an extra-dimensional person fell on their scale of ‘human’. Best case I’d end up in a lab somewhere being poked and prodded. Worst case I’d still end up in the lab, but the poking and probing would be more vivisection.  
  
“Don’t put yourself down, you seem to know your way around your weapons pretty well.” Haylan said nodding at the modified homemade weapon I’d fixed up the night before.  
  
“So what’s this thing Danse wants me to help him recover?” I asked, changing the subject as I also change the brush on the cleaning rod to the soft version, “He told me it is something you need to get in touch with your people but not much more.”  
  
“It’s an advanced transmitter that Arc-Jet were building for a deep space rocket the government wanted.” Haylan explained, her face lighting up even more, “It’s really cool, they were going to send it all the way to Mars so it’ll have tons of power, more than enough for us to get in touch with base, even with all the atmospheric distortions around here. It’s weird really...” She trailed off, a thoughtful expression on her face.  
  
“What’s weird?” I asked, looking up and focusing on her.  
  
“Well most places you can get a pretty clear signal, after all it's been two hundred years since the bombs fell, but around here you can barely get a signal to last a few miles. We can pick up Diamond City Radio and that weird classical channel, but DCR has a high gain pre-war setup.” Haylan explained, “It’s like the old records from before the nuclear winter faded.”  
  
“Huh.” I said, she was right, even as bad as the nuclear exchange was the crap in the atmosphere should have settled down long ago and it sounded like it had everywhere else, “You’re right, that is weird. Could it be jamming?”  
  
“Not in the normal sense.” Haylan said with a frown, “Most jammers just pump out crap to decrease the signal-to-noise ratio, this _looks_ natural, but...”  
  
“It shouldn’t be.” I finished for her, finishing up with the rifle and reinserting the bolt with a firm lick, “Who around here would have that kind of tech?”  
  
“The Institute.” Haylan said firmly with a nod, “We don’t know much about them, but based on what we do know they definitely have the tech, I just don’t know what they gain by killing communications. It would cost a lot of energy.”  
  
I frowned, the Institute. I had a vague recollection about that. Something from Fallout 3 but I couldn’t really place it for a moment, then it hit me. The Blade-Runner type dude who wanted the player to track down the escaped robot on the old aircraft carrier.  
  
“The guys with the robots?” I asked, “They really exist?”  
  
“They call them Synths.” Haylan corrected, “But yes, them, we don’t know much about them, just the name and that they had access to some really impressive tech, and everyone in the Commonwealth is scared of them. Lots of campfire stories of people being replaced by undetectable duplicates.”  
  
“Jesus.” I muttered, “That’s terrifying, does it really happen?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Haylan admitted, “It's mostly rumours but there are few reports that sound credible, so we’ve been taking precautions. None of us spend any time out of the sight of others if we can avoid it, the last thing we need is some robotic abomination to infiltrate the Brotherhood.”  
  
“Yeah I get that.” I said with a nod, “I wonder just how ‘undetectable’ these robots, Synths you say, really are? Undetectable to the average wasteland or really undetectable? As in invisible to high-tech? Because they are two very different things. I could think of ways to fool a simple blood test, the easiest would be to have living tissue above the skeleton. It would also allow for the proper skin temperature and other things like the galvanic response.”  
  
Haylan nodded thoughtfully.  
  
“Then if I wanted to fool metal detectors,” I continued, really getting into it, “I’d do it by using hollow non-ferrous metals for the bones themselves, it would also keep the weight down to avoid people just testing to see if someone was heavier than they looked. That sort of thing. Of course none of it would work against x-rays or ultrasounds, but then again if the goal was dealing with the average wasteland settlement it would be enough.”  
  
“And you said you weren’t a Scribe!” Haylan said with a laugh, prompting me to chuckle in return, “But you're right, I doubt they’d stand up to proper scanning, unfortunately we haven’t recovered any of their infiltration models, just bits of the more robotic versions the first expedition brought back.”  
  
“First expedition?” I asked, curious despite feeling tired and wanting to the hit the sack.  
  
“Yep.” Haylan said with a nod, “We’re the third Brotherhood team sent here in the last seven years, the first came back with a lot of pre-war tech and files, a real goldmine.”  
  
“And the second?” I asked, from the expression on her face I doubted it was a happy story.  
  
“We lost contact shortly after they arrived, just like what happened with us, and no-one heard from them again.” Haylan said sadly, “That was a few years ago and one of the reasons our team was sent here, to find out what happened to them, and if nothing else to bring back their holotags.”  
  
“Damn. I’m sorry to hear that.” I said shaking my head in sympathy.  
  
“Thank you.” Haylan said softly before sighing, “I should let you get some sleep, and I need to get some myself, Paladin Danse is taking first watch but I’ve got third.”  
  
“Night.” I replied, starting to pack the cleaning kit up and return it to her.  
  
“Keep it.” She said shaking her head, “It’s a spare and it's the least I can do for someone who went out of his way to help us.”  
  
“Thanks.” I replied with a wide smile. It was nice to be among civilised humans again. Now I just needed to figure out what the fuck I was going to do tomorrow.  
  
***  
  
I woke up feeling tired and cranky. Ever since I’d arrived in this world I’d slept like the dead, which was odd for me but I could understand it since I was wearing myself out every day, but last night I tossed and turned and dwelt on the problems facing me before finally dropping off late into the night. I _really_ didn’t want to go crawling into a factory infested with who-knows-what with only a single guy as backup, even if he was basically a walking tank, but on the other hand turning them down would mean I’d likely have to move on.  
  
I mean sure Danse could _likely_ keep me safe, but like I said to him earlier, there was a _reason_ that factory hadn’t been picked over decades ago and that reason was likely fucking terrifying. I’d lucked out against the raiders and had the advantage over the ghouls, but I was nowhere near skilled enough to go dungeon crawling. There was a good chance I’d get myself killed, or even Danse. No he needed real backup, and I wasn’t it.  
  
With a sigh I started packing up my gear and getting ready for the day. I guess I had made my decision. Now I just needed to tell them and hope they took it well.  
  
***  
  
Two hours later I was back on the road heading southeast towards the settlement marked on my map as Diamond City. Danse and Haylan had taken it better than I’d expected, but neither had exactly protested when I said I was moving on. Can’t say I blame them, if I wasn’t willing to back them up then what good was I to them?  
  
Still they’d given me some food and seemed cheerful, or at least Haylan had, when they’d said goodbye. Rhys was still a dick though and I really wished I’d punched him in the face at least once. Danse at least had said he understood and they’d find another way of getting in contact with the rest of the Brotherhood.  
  
I felt like such a coward, but honestly I don’t see how I could make any other choice. I wasn’t some hero out to remake the world, I was just a guy trying to survive. I’d help people if I saw them in trouble sure, but I just wasn’t the crusading type.  
  
It was a pity really, because as dangerous as staying with the Brotherhood team was it would have also provided me with a desperately needed safety net. They had training, equipment, and a parent organisation second to none in the wasteland.  
  
I was just coming over the top of a small hill when I noticed movement down in the lightly wooded area. I stopped, drawn out of my depressing thoughts, and knelt down and peered below. Then I smiled.  
  
Maybe one hundred seventy to two hundred meters away, was a deer. It was ugly as hell and had what looked to be a second neck jutting out just to the side of its head, but it looked to be healthy and some fresh meat was just what I needed to make me feel better.  
  
I slowly dropped my pack onto the ground and picked up my new hunting rifle. The .38 just wouldn’t have the kick for bringing down something that big but the .308 had plenty to spare. The actual bullets weren’t much different in size but a .308 _round_ had almost three times the stopping power of a .38 due to the larger carriage and corresponding increase in powder.  
  
It was a long shot with iron-sights, so I laid down on the road and used my pack for a rest as I breathed slowly, tracking the deer. She, based on the lack of antlers, didn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss. Thankfully I had the wind in my favour. The deer was just ambling along peacefully, without a care in the world.  
  
I breathed slowly, each breath measured, as I sighted down at the deer and then on the exhale I stroked the trigger. The kick of the Winchester rifle against my shoulder was almost a surprise but I was already working the bolt to load the next round, muscle memory was a wonderful thing.  
  
I needn’t have bothered, the deer took a shaky step forward, then a second, and then fall forwards on its front legs before tipping over dead. A perfect shot. I smiled as I safed my weapon and rolled to my feet. I was eating well tonight.  
  
***  
  
It took a while to butcher and clean the deer given I’d never worked on one before. It was different than butchering a rabbit or a kangaroo, but not so different as to make my previous experience worthless. The whole second neck stump was freaky as hell but as far as mutations went it wasn’t that bad. From what I could see the internals weren’t cancerous or anything so it was likely safe to eat and my geiger counter didn’t show anything more than the elevated background radiation most of the food I’d eaten lately did.  
  
I wrapped most of the internal organs inside the hide after I skinned the deer, setting aside the liver, and tossed it a good distance from where I would be setting up camp. Better to give the scavengers something to focus on and honestly I’d never been much for eating lung, brain, or heart. I only took the liver because I hadn’t exactly been eating healthy since I got to this crapsack world and it was basically a superfood, packed with all sorts of things that were good for you. Unfortunately just the _smell_ of the damn thing made me ill.  
  
I blame my stepmother, she had been a cook at the local hospital in the days before people realised that forcing people to eat horrible crap didn’t exactly help them heal. She was definitely old school in her cooking style, thankfully for the patients at the Base Hospital she had long since moved onto selling books.  
  
One summer when I’d been staying with her and my father - something I always hated -, she’d taken to feeding me ‘healthy’ food, or rather what she considered healthy, so I got liver, or rather lambs fry, every night for two weeks. It made an impression. But you know, survival trumps taste and all that.  
  
I also cut a nice flank steak with a little fat, just the way I liked it, but with the rest of it I started cutting it into very fine strips. My food preservation skills were limited and it wasn’t like I had any salt, but making jerky is very easy. The tricky part was building a drying rack without any good string or wire, but I made do by cutting small wedges into the wood and leaning it together. It sort of looked like a clothes-horse, well if it had been made by a demented carpenter.  
  
Then I built a fire underneath the rack, just a small one, before hanging up all the strips of meat. The trick with jerky is to avoid as much fat as possible, not only will it melt off and drip into the fire making an almighty stink, but it can really screw with the taste. Once it was all hung up over the fire I started gathering green wood, the greener the better, and stacked it on. The billow of smoke made me cough like mad and I had to dance back a bit, trying to get the smoke out of my eyes. Still it was doing its job.  
  
You see you need a low heat very smoky fire since you’re not actually cooking the meat but rather drying it out. Desiccation they call it. You remove all the water which prevents the growth of bacteria, yeast, mold, and other stuff that causes food to spoil. It also helps make it portable since the meat itself shrinks a lot during the process.  
  
Once I was sure none of the meat was going to fall into the fire I moved a little distance away and started to make a proper campfire for my evening meal. It was a little early to stop but I really didn’t want to go lug the deer a few kilometers.  
  
I figured the best way to make the liver edible was to throw it in my cooking pot with some water and a few of the wild veggies I gathered on my walk while I stick-roasted my flank steak. The stink made me gag more than once but I forced myself to keep cooking.  
  
While it was cooking I sat a little away and started fiddling with my Pip-boy, something that Haylan said last night had reminded that there were _always_ radio stations in the modern Fallout games and I felt stupid for not checking before. Hell if it hadn’t been for the Pip-boy flashing at me I wouldn’t have noticed their distress call. So I set the radio function to auto-scan and blinked when it came up with a station right away. I flicked it on and smiled as the sounds of [Vivaldi's Four Seasons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRxofEmo3HA) came drifted out of my wrist computer.  
  
The sound quality wasn’t great, but I leaned back and smiled, letting the sound waft over me in the afternoon sunlight. I lay there for a long while, letting several songs play before sighing and setting the tuner going. This was obviously the classical station that Haylan mentioned, but she also mentioned another station. Soon enough I found it just as some jazzy 50s style song finished playing.  
  
“Coming to you from, uhh, the jeweled green...” A voice came over the radio, stuttering and stalling, for a moment I figured it was my Pip-boy before I realised the DJ just was really shit. Sort of a disappointment because Three Dog had been awesome. “I mean the green, the uhh Great Green Jewel of the Commonwealth, it's... Diamond City Radio.”  
  
Well at least I knew the place was still standing, now I just needed to get there. It would be good to find a safe place where I wouldn’t be expected to do dangerous shit just to survive. I figured I could find work, I knew stuff, even if it was manual labour or putting my newfound gunsmithing skills to work.  
  
“Hey, uhh... have you seen the, uhh... Well there's this article in, uhh, the newspaper. Publick Occurrences.” The voice continued and I raised an eyebrow, they had a _newspaper_? Really, that was interesting. It seemed to suggest that there was at least some infrastructure around, if only to make paper and ink.  
  
“Boy, I mean... It's, well it's something. I mean, I, uhh... I'm not saying anyone is a synth, you know. I'm not saying it's, uhh, correct. And, you know, of course the mayor... I mean, I was, uhh, asked to read... I have a statement from the, uhh, mayor's office. You know, it, uhh... well I mean it just says there's, uhh, nothing to worry about. That it's... you know, safe and all. Kind of... It's crazy stuff, right? I mean... weird. Anyway, it's, uhh... well it's something to think about, I guess.” There was a slight pause, longer than normal, “Anyway, I hope you like this one. The song, I mean. It's... It's Ella Fitzgerald.”  
  
I shook my head at the incoherent ravings faded and a classic song started playing, this guy really needed to do something about his stutter if he wanted to make it on radio. Still at least it was some news at least, even if it just confirmed what Haylan had told me about the general level of paranoia about the robots running around. Then again depending on how good the personality emulation was I don’t suppose I can blame them.  
  
Why is it that it is always the _evil_ bastards that develop all the cool toys? Oh right no ethics limiting their R &D. Who knew having a soul came with a drawback? I wondered if the guys in the hazmat suits were working for this mysterious Institute, they certainly _looked_ high-tech and in good condition on the video footage and from what Haylan told me it would fit their MO.  
  
I could only wonder what they wanted a _baby_ for, or why they went to the trouble of kidnapping one from a vault, or why they felt the need to kill everyone there when they left. It just seemed... wasteful, almost casually evil. The people in the cryopods were no threat to anyone. Maybe it had been a mistake? Maybe they’d fucked up when they restarted the pods? That could be it right? Then again maybe they were just dicks who didn’t like leaving even frozen witnesses.  
  
After a while of listening to music I didn’t really like and getting annoyed at the shit DJ, whose name I learned was Travis, I turned my Pip-boy off and started munching on my now well cooked deer steak. It was a bit tough and gamey but was pretty awesome anyway. I’d always liked venison, though I normally stuck to the grain-fed stuff. Unfortunately it was soon gone and I was left with a pot of _yuck_. Pure condensed _yuck_.  
  
It took me a while to force the liver stew down, I had to stop after every mouthful to keep from vomiting, but I managed it in the end. Just because something is good for you doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy consuming it. Still it wasn’t like I had a lot of options if I wanted to avoid scurvy and other nasty diseases that come with not eating enough of the right stuff.  
  
As I looked out over the land I could just make out the shape of towers in the distance. Based on my map and if the roads were in still decent condition it was maybe two days walk away if I didn’t get distracted again, either by a fight or by spotting another deer. Then again the jerky was going nicely and should give me enough to last for a while.  
  
Next stop Boston.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I know some of you are going to be a bit disappointed that he didn’t stick with the BoS but honestly I couldn’t see him going into some area crawling with mooks willingly at this point. And if he isn’t going to make himself useful they aren’t going to invite him to join their little club.  
> Not a lot of action this chapter, but Sam got some much needed information about the Institute that will be useful in the future. Oh and on the subject of his brainstorming with Haylan you and I know that the G3 Synths aren’t made that way but Sam doesn’t so his logic is sound based on the limited information he has.  
> Some of the lines from the radio were taken from the wiki directly and thus the game.  
> As always send your thanks to Mizu who is worthy of great praise for his tireless efforts!


	7. Welcome to Beantown

Two days later I was standing on the banks of a river, the Charles according to my Pip-boy’s map, looking at the ruins of a once great city. It was a mess, skyscrapers had fallen over, and the ones that were still standing looked like they had chunks missing. The river running alongside the city was a polluted mess, dark water that caused my geiger counter to tick loudly when I put it near it.  
  
The place had been fucked hard by the bombs, yet oddly enough it was in much better condition than my recollections of the Capital Wasteland in Fallout 3. Whatever nukes hit the local area must have been a fair way off because most of the damaged looked to have been done by the blastwave and the two centuries of neglect that followed.  
  
I hadn’t run into any major trouble getting here, there had been one pack of raiders that I’d seen a mile off coming along the road. There were about twenty of them so I did the smart thing and hid in the bush until they were gone. Then there had been a trio of wild dogs chasing down another deer. They left me alone so I returned the favour. The idea of shooting dogs, even if they looked to be feral as hell, didn’t sit right with me.  
  
My fingers itched and twitched at my side as I thought about how nice it would be to have a smoke right about now. I’d quit a few years ago, but damn if the stress wasn’t getting to me, I’d love to take a nice long drag and just _relax_. There was a reason people smoked even with all the health risks, nicotine was one hell of a drug.  
  
In the distance I could see two bridges straddling the river, both looked intact if not exactly in the best condition, with rusted out cars and buses sitting on them. I wasn’t sure which way to go, both looked about equally likely to give way and dump me into a river of sludge. After a little fiddling I decided the western-most one seemed to be the closest to Diamond City so I shrugged, picked up my gear and started walking along the water. Close but not _too_ close. There might be something nasty in that soup.  
  
Half an hour later I was climbing up the embankment and onto the bridge. Whoever built it did a damn good job considering it was still standing after centuries without maintenance even if there were bits of rebar sticking out in places. That was something I’d have to give this crapsack world, when they built something they built it to last.  
  
Idly munching on a bit of deer jerky I carefully made my way across the bridge, one hand resting on my pistol the entire way. It was a good thing I’d embraced my inner paranoid survivalist, because I was about a quarter of the way across when there was a loan groan and a half-rotted head popped up from behind a car.  
  
My jerky hit the road as I snapped my pistol up and fired once at the ghoul’s head, narrowly missing and hitting the rusted red paint, sending sparks everywhere. To my immense surprise the ghoul didn’t immediately try to eat me, no instead something much weirder happened. The ghoul dropped to the ground with a yelp, its hands covering its head.  
  
“Arrrg! Why are you shooting at me!?” The ghoul cried out in a recognisably feminine voice, it was still scratchy and she sounded like she was a five pack a day smoker, but it was definitely female. So yep, not a feral.  
  
“Whoops?” Was about all I could think to say. Maybe my inner paranoid survivalist needed some adjustments.  
  
***  
  
Apparently nearly shooting someone in the head isn’t the way to make friends. Who knew? Video games lied to me! That should have been the start of a life-long friendship with all sorts of comic hijinks, but no, real life doesn’t work that way.  
  
So yeah the ghoul, and I didn’t even get a name, didn’t stick around very long, gathering up her bedroll and scurrying off giving me dirty looks the entire way no matter how much I tried to apologize and claim I wasn’t a bigot who hated all ghouls. I mean I said that and all, maybe I shouldn’t have clarified that I did kill the ones trying to eat my face, but you know that is pretty obvious. I honestly don’t understand why she could take offence at that. I mean _she_ might be safe because the ferals think she is one of them, but I happen to like my face undigested!  
  
Okay yeah I screwed that up, but no-one died so that’s a plus. I wonder why she was sleeping on the bridge in the first place, you couldn’t pay me enough to do that, between the holes and what might be lurking in the water below its taking your life in your hands.  
  
As I finished crossing the bridge I checked my health stats on my Pip-boy, the ghoul having prompted me to see about my radiation exposure. Thankfully the designers assumed that the users of their device would be just as clueless as I am about the actual nitty gritty of rads and so on and provided a helpful chart. I was at ‘low’ exposure but the Pip-boy recommended seeking medical treatment anyway with a helpful advertisement for a brand of radiation medication. Can’t manage a decent GUI but they somehow have embedded ads... Bloody universe.  
  
Still I made it one of my first priorities to get some RadAway when I hit civilisation. I had no desire to end up like that poor woman whose head I almost took off. Radiation did more in this setting than make your hair fall out and kill you if you got too much, well for some people at least.  
  
There were two major theories about how ghouls came about. Well three really but I don’t consider “It’s MAGIC, it don’t gotta explain shit” as a valid theory. The first was they were created the same way that super-mutants were, via exposure to the Forced Evolution Virus, only in their case a low dosage of the damn thing that drifted through the air after the bombs hit, activating when they were exposed to enough radiation that they mutated into a semi-stable form.  
  
The second was that it was something inherent in the human genepool of the Fallout universe, most likely in a small percentage of the population, that was activated by the said same exposure to just the right amount of radiation. Enough to mutate, but not enough to outright kill. Both theories had their valid points and I tended to waffle back and forth on which I believed was more likely depending on the day.  
  
Of course given I was walking into an unknown environment I really shouldn’t have been musing on matters biological but rather focusing on what was in front of me. I might have seen the seen small pothole in the road that I tripped over, slamming my face into the hard material of the bridge. Of course if I hadn’t fallen over I might have ended up dead, because as I lay there softly cursing and trying to get the taste of blood out of my mouth the sound of gunshots lit up the late afternoon air.  
  
I was near the edge of the bridge and I rolled under a rusted out car, a sports model that would have once cost a fortune, and looked outwards as I struggled to get my pack off and my rifle free. I grabbed for my .38, I simply had more rounds for it and its semi-auto nature meant a much higher rate of fire even if it lacked the stopping power of my .308.  
  
There was silence for a long moment and I started to think that maybe I had imagined everything, then the gunfire started up again and I tensed. It seemed to be coming from the side of the river that I was heading towards, perhaps two streets over.  
  
Then someone burst out out of a building, running fast and shooting over her shoulder as she did, the little burp, burp, burp of her sub-machine gun definitely not what I had heard earlier. She was dressed in a tattered red leather trench-coat and seemed to be injured, she was moving at a good clip but she was also limping. Over her shoulder was a messenger bag. As she skidded to a halt and ducked below a concrete partien between the river and the road she reached into her bag and drew another magazine from it and slotted it home in the SMG.  
  
A few moments later four, no five, people came from the same direction at a slower pace. They looked to be dressed in dark leather outfits with padding around the chest and wore helmets with metal bars over the face. To be honest they reminded me somewhat of American football players rather than the raiders I’d seen before. They moved in a professional manner as well, clearing corners and holding their weapons at the ready.  
  
The red-clad woman popped up from behind her cover and laid down a burst at them, sending the men scattering for cover.  
  
“Come on Miss Piper, don’t make this harder than it has to be!” One of them called out. “Give it up now and I’ll make sure you get a fair trial.”  
  
“Fuck you Danny Sullivan!” The woman, Piper I assumed, yelled as she fired another burst at the group of men. “I didn’t kill that guard and you know it! McDonough is setting me up!”  
  
Ahh okay, that makes sense, they’re cops and the woman is a fugitive. Right. Nothing I need to get involved in then.  
  
“Scrag this pussy bullshit Sullivan.” One of the other men yelled, leaning out from behind cover and firing his shotgun towards the woman they were hunting. “Listen cunt, either you give up right now or when we get back to Diamond City we’re going to pay your sister a visit.”  
  
“Wall’s sake Derek!” The first man, Sullivan, cried out, “She’s just a little kid!”  
  
“Her bitch sister killed Marco!” Derek, the one with the shotgun, shouted “People need to learn that you don’t mess with Diamond City Security!” The rest of the men, minus Sullivan, cried out their agreement.  
  
Right. That’s not on. Cops or not, no bastard gets to threaten a little kid while I’m still breathing. The men might be protected from their target by cover, but they were out in the open for me. I sighted down on the loudmouth and hesitated for a split second, from here I could just as easily take down their target, put a round in her leg. She’d live, most likely, bullet wounds weren’t pleasant and hydrostatic shock was a thing, but it would give me an in with the people running the city I wanted to be part of.  
  
On the other hand could I live with myself if I sided with people threatening children? What would my family say if they knew I was even thinking about it? Poppy would be so incredibly disappointed. I don’t know if I was actually making a choice or if my thoughts caused my finger to tighten on the trigger automatically. All I know is that one moment I was frozen in thought and the next a man had his head blown off. I’d made my choice.   
  
If I’d moved quicker I could have taken out another one, but I didn’t and the men scattered, putting various debris between me and them, while still staying out of the line of sight of the woman in red. It didn’t take long for them to send fire my way either. Like I said, professionals.  
  
Bullets pinged around me, impacting the car I was laying under, sending chips of metal and concrete splashing all around me. I swore loudly as one bit struck me in the cheek. It was like a bit of molten fire embedding itself in my skin. That was going to scar, I just knew it. I was hardly pretty, the most complimentary anyone had ever gotten about my visage had been calling it stoic, and personally I thought of it as rather plain, but damnit I didn’t want a big scar on my face!  
  
Rolling out from under the car, and more importantly away from the bullets that were still coming my way, I brought my rifle off and fired back. I didn’t hit anything, but then again I didn’t expect to, I was just trying to get the bastards to stop shooting and worry about their own hides for a moment.  
  
Fortunately my new friend in red hadn’t taken my impulsive actions as a means of escape and was laying down her own fire. One of the goons stumbled backwards as she hit in him the chest with a burst. He was back shooting a moment later, so it obviously didn’t penetrate the armour, but it gave me enough time to get behind another car and line up a shot.  
  
I was starting to wish I’d grabbed the .308 which was now laying on the ground several meters away, the extra stopping power would be very useful. Getting to it would involve braving the gunfire coming my way again. At least now the cops, or were they guards? Oh well doesn’t matter. At least now the cops weren’t focusing entirely on me, being forced to split their attention between two threats.  
  
One of the cops suddenly popped up from behind cover, his arm stretched back in a throwing motion and hurled something my way. My eyes widened as I realised what that the small baseball sized object was.  
  
_Grenade_.  
  
Video games and most movies _seriously_ undersell the destructive power of even a basic fragmentation grenade. They aren’t just a little puff of explosive, well they are but that’s not the _really_ dangerous part. No, the dangerous part is the _casing_ , which is designed in such a way to fragment really well, hence the name, and spread out in a wave of body slicing destruction.  
  
I was already scrambling for the edge of the bridge even as it sailed through the air, some part of me instinctively moving for the water, even as I hoped that the grenade itself wouldn’t land in the water with me. Explosions underwater are _worse_ than airbursts when it comes to concussive force.  
  
Of course I stumbled on the _same_ bit of broken bridge that had sent me to the ground earlier just as the grenade hit the ground right in front of me. It was white and looked to be made of leather. It was a _fucking baseball_ , only it was clearly altered and stuffed with what my newfound skills told me was a primitive chemical fuse triggered by breaking a tiny glass vial with the large metal pin at the top. The fucker had lobbed an IED at me.  
  
I snatched the baseball, grenade, off the ground and hurled it back the way it came with all my might, hoping that the fuse was long enough that it wouldn’t explode in my face. I was almost lucky. The baseball grenade was almost three meters away in the air when it exploded, the blast wave rattled my body and hammered me to the ground.  
  
Chunks of hot leather and plastic impacted on my back, most of it thankfully sliding off the armour I was wearing but bits hit my arms and legs, burning through my vault suit, the synthetic fabric making matters worse as it fused to my skin like melted plastic.  
  
I howled like a madman and rolled over and over again, trying to stop the pain, my rifle flying away from myself. It burnt. It burnt more than anything I could remember, including the time when I was seven and I put my hand on a wood stove, not realising it was on and giving myself third degree burns on my palm in the process. I still had scars from that.  
  
My screams tapered off into harsh sobs as I lay on the bridge, my brain blue-screening and refusing to even consider what was going on around me. I was only drawn out of my fuge by a small chunk of bridge flying up to nearly take my eye out, instead hitting me in the brow. The bastards were shooting at me again. It was bad enough they had almost blown me up and set bits of me on fire, now they wanted to finish the job.  
  
The human fight or flight response really is an amazing thing. It lets you do things you otherwise would be incapable of, like a mother lifting a broken car off their injured child, or a soldier ignoring all pain as he carries a wounded comrade back to the medic even as he is bleeding out himself.  
  
It basically removes your body’s limiters and gives you what amounts to superpowers. Of course they come with a cost, those limiters are there for a very good reason. The human body might be capable of lifting a car, but doing so _damages_ you, it rips tendons and strains muscles, and might just leave you crippled for life.  
  
With a roar I lunged upwards, all sense of reason escaping me, totally ignoring cover and grabbed up my rifle as I charged towards the shore and the bastards who were shooting at me. The fuckers were going to _pay_.  
  
I fired from the hip as I ran, I didn’t hit anything, hell I was lucky that one shot out of three actually managed to go anywhere near the fuckers. Soon enough my magazine ran dry, my rifle clicking as I kept pulling the trigger. But by then I was fairly close to the freaked out cops who were focusing on me, their own shots pinging all around me as I ran in a zigzag pattern.  
  
With a scream I hurled my homemade rifle at the nearest with a great burst of strength, the wooden stock hitting him in the helmet and knocking him to the ground, stunned. One of the others seemed to have gotten a hold of himself and fired his pistol, a puny little .38 revolver at me, striking me in the chest twice. I grunted with the impacts, but my armour held against the small calibre bullets. There was a reason for the old saying about never getting into a gunfight with a weapon that didn’t start with at least “4”.  
  
I drew my pistol with a smooth action even as I kept charging, putting three rounds into the man who had just shot me. I vaguely recognised him as the one who had tried to reason with their prey. Two of the bullets impacted on his armour and didn’t penetrate, proving that I needed to get a bigger pistol myself, but the third slipped into the gap between his chest armour and his helmet, ripping out a chunk of his throat, dropping him to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut as blood sprayed everywhere, including over me.  
  
My left eye was glued shut with blood from an earlier wound, leaving me with zero peripheral vision, which is how one of the reminding cops got the drop on me, tackling me to the ground. He was a big lad, not as tall as me, then again no-one I’d seen in the wasteland apart from Danse was, but he had some heft to him. Unfortunately he was a shit wrestler and I still had my pistol, which I jammed under his jaw and pulled the trigger.  
  
Blood sprayed everywhere, most out of the back of his head, but enough splatted me in the face and into my own mouth. The copper taste made me wretch, but I held my gorde before shoving the lifeless body off me, only to be kicked in the side by the guy I’d beaned with my thrown rifle earlier. The kick lifted me up off the ground even through the armour, and the cop staggered back swearing as he hopped on one leg. He’d hurt himself more than he had me.  
  
I rolled to the side and brought up my pistol to fire again, only for it to click empty. Out of bullets. He was raising his own weapon. Fuck. I was dead. I didn’t give up, I didn’t close my eyes and accept my fate, I tried to scramble back for a weapon, something, but my knife was still in my backpack.  
  
Then the cop stumbled slightly before falling to his knees, blood bubbling out of his mouth before falling to the side, dead. Behind him was the woman in red, holding her submachine gun, a little curl of smoke coming from the barrel. Behind her was the final guard, lying on the ground, his eyes closed in death even as his hands were locked onto his leg, a growing pool of blood gathering under him from the wound. It must have hit an artery.  
  
“Damn Blue, you look like hell.” The woman said as I closed my eyes, the adrenaline fading away and everything went black.  
  
***  
  
I woke up feeling like half dead hammered dog shit, which was odd really, because I should have been nearly dead pulverised horse shit at best. I was laying on something soft and I could see faded wall paper in front of my face, a broken window set in the wall, and early morning light coming into the room.  
  
For a brief moment I wondered if it had all been a dream, that I was in some run down hospital somewhere dying or something. Then a pretty face popped into view, there was a bruise on her left cheek, and her smile was slightly mocking with a hint of concern. Brown hair fell in curls framing her face neatly. Honestly she looked like an angel.  
  
“Afraid not Blue, but I’ve been called worse.” The woman said with a laugh, her shoulders shaking.  
  
Shit. I said that out loud didn’t I?  
  
“Where are we?” I croaked, my throat hoarse, as I propped myself up on one elbow.  
  
“A safe house.” The woman, Piper I think her name was, said, looking around the room. She was still wearing the same red trench coat that I saw at the bridge, though she had a bandage on her left arm clearly visible where it was rolled up.“It was where I was heading when those assholes caught up to me near the bridge.”  
  
I glanced around the room, it wasn’t much, just another mattress near the door, a few boxes, a large plastic water drum, what looked like the sets of armour that the assholes who had blown him up had been wearing along with their weapons stacked in a pile. There near the pile were my weapons and my backpack. At least I hadn’t lost them.  
  
“Why are you calling me that?” I asked with another croak. God my throat hurt, it was like someone poured sand directly down my gullet.  
  
“Duh. The suit, why else? Well I suppose it's more muddy red now with all the blood covering it, but red is already taken and I pull it off so much better than you.” Piper said with that mocking smile, if I hadn’t read some much Worm fanfic I would have called it vulpine, but I couldn’t do that to her. No-one deserved to be compared to fucking Tattletale.  
  
“Here, drink this.” She said, holding a plastic bottle of what looked to be water to my lips. I coughed a little as the cold liquid dribbled into my mouth, but damn did it feel good.  
  
“Sam.” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my free hand, “Sam Parker.”  
  
“Nice to meet you Sam Parker,” Piper said, “I’m Piper Wright, owner and chief reporter for Publick Occurrences, the best newspaper in the Commonwealth!”  
  
“I thought it was the only newspaper?” I asked, not really feeling all that hot. The odd thing was that my arms and legs didn’t feel like parts of them had been burnt off. I vaguely remembered that I had heard something about the newspaper on the radio.  
  
“Doesn’t matter.” Piper said shaking her head, her smile fading away, “I guess there is no newspaper now, not with that bastard McDonough framing me for killing a guard! I bet he’s already scraped my press, or has some lackey of his printing lies and propaganda on the poor old girl!”  
  
“Woah.” I said, “Hold up, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and speaking of not knowing shit, how come I’m not in blinding agony?” My head was still a bit fuzzy and her ranting wasn’t helping matters.  
  
“Oh that, I pumped you full of stims.” Piper said dismissively, “I had to use the two I found in your bag and one of the two I had as well, the last went on my ankle, damn thing was broken.” She gave me a shrewd look, “You were pretty messed up, that’s why I gave you so much.”  
  
I nodded distractedly, I didn’t think I’d been that badly hurt really. Not enough to need _three_ stim-packs, which left me without any spares, again, but it was better than being dead or crippled that was for sure.  
  
“You got some food in this place?” I asked a moment later, “I’m starving.”  
  
“Sure Blue.” Piper said, her eyes crinkling with a smile, “But I’m not feeding you, so get your lazy ass up.”  
  
***  
  
A short time later I was feeling much more human as I shoveled some sort of meal bar into my face, alternating bites with chunks of my deer jerky, as I listened to Piper tell me her story. It seems like the Major of Diamond City, one Patrick McDonough Jr., doesn’t appreciate a free press and had Piper locked out of the city after she published one too many articles that were critical of the man.  
  
Of course the ebullient Miss Wright didn’t take this lying down and promptly snuck back into the city and all was well. For a few days. Then Piper went to meet with one of her contacts, a guard working Diamond City Security, in their normal meeting places only to find him dead in the back alley. Just as she was thinking what to do more members of Security showed up, and they were in a shoot-first-ask-questions-never frame of mind.  
  
So being a smart cookie she booked it out of there like the hounds of hell were on her trail, heading for a safe house she’d set up during what she described as a previous adventure involving radiation cultists and possible death by being thrown into a bottomless abyss. Unfortunately a squad of stormtroopers had caught up to her near the bridge, and from there I knew the rest of the story.  
  
For all I knew she could have been full of shit, I was hardly the greatest judge of character after all. Still something about it rang true, she could spin a tale and was almost hyper in her cheerfulness, so I shoved my doubt out of my head, along with the guilt about killing cops, and focused on what was happening next.  
  
“So I assume you’ve got a plan for clearing your name?” I asked. Most people would grab her family and run from the death squads that were hunting her but somehow I figured she wasn’t that kind of person. I also knew unless it was super dangerous I was going to help her, I didn’t kill three men, one of them in cold blood, to let her get herself killed.  
  
“Oh yes.” Piper said, her smile growing into something that could chill the blood, “Let me tell you about my good friend Nick Valentine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So when Piper met Sam... :p Our boy is a wee bit impulsive isn’t he? Not to mention more than a little chauvinistic. If Piper had been a guy I doubt he’d have been as quick to intervene. He’s also got a berserker streak! So here we are in Boston, what a welcome!  
> All hail the great Mizu, the hero who braves my terrible spelling!


	8. Strolling Downtown

We didn’t head off directly on our hunt for Piper’s friend, the mechanical man, that would have been stupid. Stim-packs might be a miracle drug but they weren’t perfect, we were both still weak and our bodies needed rest. Granted myself more than her. So to fill the time I went over the gear that Piper had looted from the dead cops after she had dragged my ass to her safehouse. Girl is much stronger than she looks, I’m hardly small, then again I doubt the wasteland encourages weakness. It also encourages a magpie-like attention to shiny things. I’m honestly amazed the woman left the cops their underpants, assuming they were wearing them in the first place.  
  
The weapons were the first thing I went for, and as I’d grown accustomed to was immediately disappointed. They were shit. Poorly maintained bits of shit. The shotgun looked to be so old that it was one bad shell away from having its sawn-off barrel exploding in the user's face. I really never understood the impulse to mutilate such a wonderful tool, well not unless you were planning a bank heist and couldn’t get a pistol or you were so incompetent that you needed what amounted to a modern blunderbuss to actually hit anything.  
  
In the corner it went, I might be able to do something with it later, but for now it was just an accident waiting to happen. The rest of the guns were the same handmade .38s that were so common. I swear there must be a demented gunsmith churning the bloody things out by the dozen somewhere in the wasteland. Still they’d be useful for parts if nothing else.  
  
There was one score, one of the ‘pipe-guns’ as Piper called them had a scope. Nothing impressive, just a battered old thing with an objective lens diameter of 40mm and a variable magnification setting of 3-12x. Still with a little bit of work I managed to mate it with my .308, giving myself some range advantage. I’d need to calibrate it of course, which I couldn’t do inside the safehouse, but that wouldn’t be much of an issue thankfully.  
  
Piper might be a bit of a motormouth and seem to be blase but she was _far_ from stupid. Her safe house contained an impressive amount of supplies, including, hallelujah, a wide range of ammunition. I now had sixty-one rounds for my Winchester .308. I just wish I had more than one magazine for it, and one bigger than six rounds. Still it was a good bonus, I was getting sick of things not falling over dead when I shot them. Bloody rude that is.  
  
Combining with the looted .38 ammo and her own stash, along with my own, we were practically swimming in the stuff. Over three hundred rounds, which was good because her little SMG had been modified to use it. I offered to tune it up and even switch the receiver over to use 10mm rounds, which it had been originally designed for, but she turned me down. Claimed that it was good enough for her as is, and that .38 was much easier to come by.  
  
In addition Piper said she didn’t let anyone but herself and a guy named Arturo touch her weapon. I could respect that, a person should be possessive of their tools. She did borrow the cleaning kit that Haylan had gave me to spruce her weapon up a bit though. That I also approved of. Poor weapons maintenance was a grave, and often deadly, sin. Thankfully unlike many forms of stupidity it was self-correcting, the perpetrators suffering from a very real form of karma.  
  
After working on the weapons I turned my attention to a matter almost as pressing, protection. My chest armour was damn good, even the few rounds I took at near point blank range hadn’t done more than scuff it, but it only covered my chest, and the rest of me was far less protected. Not to mention my vault-suit was a total mess, it was covered in blood, mine and others, mud, and a bunch of other crud. It was also missing bits where it had burnt onto my skin during the battle.  
  
So it had to go, but I was hardly going to run around butt naked except for my chest armour. Thankfully Piper had that solved with her looting. So now I had a pair of worn dark pants, a set of heavy boots, and a t-shirt that had possibly been white long ago. It took a bit of scrubbing with cold water to get the blood mostly out, so while they weren’t pristine they were wearable.  
  
Most of the gear Piper had in her boxes was stuff she had planned to use herself, and as such any clothes there wouldn’t fit me by a long shot. Except for a jacket she had picked up once upon a time, she got a funny look on her face when I picked it up, but said I could take it. It was dark brown and made of some sort of leather that I wasn’t familiar with, but it fit almost perfectly over my chest armour and was nicely worn in while still being warm.  
  
I was tempted to snag one of the helmets Piper had recovered but she said that it would be like painting a target on us, apparently they were widely known in Boston to be worn only by Diamond City Security and would draw more attention that it was worth, so I stuck with just what I had.  
  
It didn’t stop me from making good use of the material of their armour however. A little wire, some time with my pliers, some tough connecting straps from the armour and I had myself a serviceable, if not pretty, combat harness to hold my knife, my spare mags, and even a little pouch for extra rounds of ammunition.  
  
As I was working on it was learning a little bit more about my new companion.  
  
“So what about your sister?” I asked, pausing to hold a bit of wire in my teeth as I hunted for my pliers to twist the connection together, “Aren’t you worried Mayor McDickweed is going to use her against you?”  
  
“A little.” Piper said with a frown marring her pretty face, “But she knows to get somewhere safe when something like this happens. I’ve got friends who will take care of her. Vadim might be a blowhard, but he and Yefim will make sure she is alright, and if it gets too hot they’ll get her out of town. I’ve got people in Bunker Hill who owe me.”  
  
I nodded as I twisted off another of the connections and checked to see if it would hold, smiling as it did. If she wasn’t worried about her kid sister, then I wasn’t going to do it for her.  
  
Piper reached into her coat pocket and fished something out, a pack of cigarettes and an old flip lighter. I was practically drooling as she bumped one out of the pack by tapping it on the back of her hand before catching it in her lips and bringing the lighter up. She paused, the lighter halfway to the smoke, her eyes wide as she noticed me staring.  
  
“Err...” She said, “You want one?”  
  
“Oh god yes.” I said in a half prayer, half whisper. All the reasons for quitting left my mind, screw my health, screw the expense, screw the dulled tastebuds, screw everything. I just wanted a hit of that sweet sweet nicotine.  
  
“Here you go Blue.” Piper said with a laugh, tossing me the pack and lighting her own smoke, she took a deep drag before passing over the lighter.  
  
“Thanks Angel.” I replied as I tapped my own smoke out and lit it, years of practice coming back to me in a moment. I pulled deep with the first drag, closing my eyes as I held the smoke in my lungs for a long moment. The hit was amazing. How I’d missed it. It was like being hugged by an old friend.  
  
“Angel?” Piper asked with a sly smile as I opened my eyes.  
  
“If you’re going to keep calling me Blue it’s only fair I give you your own tag.” I replied with a shrug, my cigarette dangling from my lips. It was strong, much stronger than what I was used to, and it tasted different, but it was still a death-stick.  
  
“Fair enough.” Piper said shaking her head and laughing, her curly hair fluttering around her face like a blanket of deep brown.  
  
“Where are these from?” I asked, nodding at the pack of smokes in my hand, they were in a plain package that looked like it had seen much better days, “I find it hard to believe that they lasted two hundred years.”  
  
Even with the reduced population there would have been enough smokers to use up the pre-war supplies that rode out the nuclear fires to have used them all up long ago, and even if some were still left they’d have long ago rotted to dust. I knew that from the time I found my old ‘stash’ when cleaning out my childhood bedroom years and years ago and discovered a pack I’d hidden under my bed over a decade before.  
  
“I get them from a trader that comes up from Virginia in the old Columbia Commonwealth every few months. They still grow tobacco down there in a few places.” Piper said with a smile, “We have a deal, he brings me a few cartons and I give him free billing in the paper when he comes into down, works for both of us.”  
  
“Surprised the radiation didn’t mutate the plants into something even nastier.” I said with a smirk, thinking about man eating tobacco plants. Then I frowned, with my luck I was probably inhaling something that was fertilised with human remains. Then again right that moment I didn’t give a shit, I needed it. Chances were something or someone would kill me long before lung cancer. No I’m not an addict. I swear.  
  
“Dunno.” Piper said with a shrug, “Surprised you don’t know, you look like you’ve smoked before, where did you get yours in... Where did you say you were from again?”  
  
“Rockcliffe.” I said with a shrug, “Every now and then a trader would dock and we’d get some, never did tell us where he got his stuff. Never could figure out if he was a pirate or a raider, or if he was keeping his source secret so we didn’t cut out the middleman.”  
  
I felt a little bad for lying to her, but dammit, it was better than the truth. There was no way she’d believe me, best case she’d humour me, worst case she’d run screaming from the crazy person. Hell half the time I did think I was crazy, maybe I was laying in a mental ward back home dreaming I was in this shitsack of a world.  
  
“Uh huh.” Piper said skeptically, before shrugging, “Anyway don’t get too use to them, I’ve only got one pack with me, if you want more you’ll need to get into my place in Diamond City.”  
  
Okay, so if I want more smokes I just need to kill everyone in the city. I can do that. I just need some plutonium, tritium, some good machine tools and... What the fuck...? I know how to build nukes now? Stupid bloody universe. You don’t go handing that kind of information out, no matter how fucked the world already is!  
  
“You alright Blue?” Piper asked, tilting her head slightly, “You like you just swallowed a bloatfly.”  
  
_‘Oh it’s nothing Piper,’_ , I thought somewhat manically, _‘some eldritch asshat just downloaded the know-how to blow up a city block with parts from a fucking soft-drink vending machine into my brain... Why the fuck does a vending machine have something that can be used to make nuclear trigger in it in the first bloody place!?’_  
  
“I’m fine, just a bit of gas.” I said instead, my guts twisting up as I once again tried to shove the insanity that my life had become into the dark corner of my mind where it belonged, “So tell me more about this mate of yours, Nick? He’s a Synth you say? How do you know you can trust him?”  
  
“Oh Nicky is a sweetie.” Piper said, allowing me to change the subject, but clearly not giving up on anything, “The Institute may have made him but he’s his own man. Best he figures is that he was some sort of prototype between the old clunkers the Institute use as foot soldiers and their newer human looking models.”  
  
“I see.” I said with a nod, and I did, if he was clearly inhuman in appearance, and thus a known element, it would go a long way to explain his acceptance, doubly so if he made himself useful to the community, “And you’re sure he’ll help you?”  
  
“Oh yeah, Nicky owes me.” Piper said with a firm nod and a mysterious smile, “Big time.”  
  
“If you say so.” I said with a shrug, “So are you sure we’ll find him at this Goodneighbor place?”  
  
“Pretty sure.” Piper said, “He lives in Diamond City but he hasn’t been around lately. Still I know he has a bunch of contacts in Goodneighbor, so at least we can get a message to him, and it's a good place to stock up on supplies.”  
  
I shrugged and finished up working with my new combat vest. Inwardly however I was already working up a shopping list. There was a lot of stuff I needed, starting with new clothing and some damn underpants. Commando sucked. I’d even settle for boxers if I was forced.  
  
***  
  
We left early the next morning after getting an early night. I was tempted to take all my gear with me, but after talking with Piper I decided to leave most of it behind in the safehouse. The place she was taking us wasn’t that far away and said it was better to move light and quick in downtown Boston. So I was only taking my pistol, my two rifles, my backpack with some of my lighter gear, and three of the pipe-weapons to sell when we got to our destination.  
As we stepped out into the early morning sunlight I got my first look at where I’d spent the last two days recovering from the consequences of my stupidity. It was a squat two story building, I think Americans called them Brownstones, though I don’t understand why; if anything it looked to be made of sandstone to me. It was situated about half a kilometer and two streets away from the bridge where we had our little battle. When i realised that my respect for Piper went up even more, I’d have trouble carrying _her_ that far, I don’t how she managed to drag my heavy ass so far.  
  
I helped Piper drag a metal dumpster over the hole in the wall we used as an entry point. She’d chosen the place carefully, it looked to be in much worse condition on the outside than it was on the inside. The walls were broken in places on the upper levels, the roof was basically gone, but there was one little room hidden away under the broken stairs that was perfectly nice and that is where we had been set up. Someone would need to look pretty hard to find the entrance and there wasn’t anything in the rest of the building to prompt the exploration.  
  
Piper took point on our little trek. I wasn’t all that in favour of her doing that, it was the most dangerous position to be in, but she knew the area better than me and she could handle herself so it was only logical. I told my inner male chauvinist to shut his face and get back into his corner as I hefted my rifle and took the rearguard.  
  
It wasn’t that I thought women were inferior to men or anything stupid like that. I knew that women could do _anything_ men could do. I grew up around plenty of strong women, my mother and grandmothers were tough people, and I had nothing but respect and love for them. It was just that I was a little old fashioned. It came from being mostly raised by my grandparents and people from their generation, that is people born in the 1920s and 30s.  
  
Most of the time it wasn’t an issue, other then getting the odd comment about my manners. Of course I think that the world would be a better place if more people in my generation had better manners and did things like hold open the door for people. But every now and then it caused trouble, I’d been raised in a way that instilled the idea that a man, a real man not an adult human male, _protected_ women. Among other things.  
  
A real man never raised his hand in anger to a woman; barring self-defence, a real man never strikes a child, a real man was polite, a real man was generous, a real man put himself in harm's way for the good of others. Anything less and you weren’t a man. All good things really, most of the time if you didn’t take them to the extreme and were pragmatic. But in the modern world, at least the one I came from, it could be problematic and taken as patronising if I wasn’t careful.  
  
While I don’t think Piper would take it badly she was clearly capable of looking after herself and I like to think that as I got older I’d learnt how to be more moderate in my view point. It led to less arguments. That was another character flaw of mine, while I loved debating, I _loathed_ arguments, they always made me feel uncomfortable, even as an observer.   
  
We’d been walking in silence for about two hours and I was starting to feel a strange mixture of boredom and anxiety I never knew was possible. For most of my life I’d been able to handle silence pretty well, I could go days without saying a word, but right at that moment I wanted nothing more than a friendly voice to fill the void. Unfortunately that would be stupidity of the highest order since we were in what was effectively hostile territory.  
  
I froze dead still at the exact same moment Piper’s hand came up, the back of it flat as she stopped in her tracks. It wasn’t her gesture that froze me however, it was the _howl_ that split the mid-morning air. Now I’m no expert on howls, since only dingos and feral dogs do it back home, but there is some part of the human brain that remembers the days when wolves were a major threat, I know this because at that moment it was screaming at me to run, run, run because whatever was making that unholy racket was _big_ and _mean_.  
  
Piper scrambled to the left of the street and I went to the right, behind a ruined bus stop. My pack fall off my shoulders with a loud thump as I shrugged out of it and brought my rifle up. I kept from shaking by focusing down the sights of my .38, cold sweat dripping down my face as I tensed my muscles.  
  
For several long moments nothing happened, and then just as I was about to relax _something_ came bounding around the corner. It was massive, almost as big as a small horse, with green scaly skin and a head shaped like a dog, if the dog had been bred by H.R. Giger on an acid trip. A massive tongue lolled out of its mouth, its mouth practically _dripped_ with discoloured fangs.  
  
The smart thing to do would have been to stay still and hope it went away. I however wasn’t actually thinking about doing anything _smart_ , I wasn’t thinking at all really, if anything I was trying to keep from shitting myself. Ghouls and raiders I could handle. This thing? No. Fuck that.  
  
I opened fire.  
  
I also missed by a country mile. My hands were shaking so bad I was about as accurate as a meth-head with parkinsons trying to take a piss. Bullets went bloody everywhere. The mutant hound on the other hand knew exactly where it was going, and headed towards me. My shots improved slightly as I got a hold of myself, unfortunately the dog was moving so quickly and in such a random pattern that I only managed to wing it once before I ran dry and fumbled to change my magazine.  
  
I was going to get my face eaten off by something out of my worst nightmares. It was less than five meters away and I could already feel its hot breath on my face as I tried to get the magazine into my rifle. Then Piper stepped out of her hiding place and put a tight, controlled, series of three round bursts into the side of the beast.  
  
The hound skidded hard at the impacts, greenish blood spraying everywhere as the little bullets riddled its internal organs. The cry it let out was startling, it was almost like the sound my dogs made when I stepped on them in the middle of the night. It kept coming, but not in a controlled fashion and I started to backpedal away from it, before it skidded to a halt, still alive but not for much longer.  
  
“Damn Blue.” Piper said, drawing my attention away from the demon dog, she was standing in the middle of the street changing the magazine on her little SMG and shaking her head, “I can’t take you anywhere.”  
  
“Sor... Sorry.” I stuttered out as I _finally_ managed to the magazine into the rifle and clicked back the bolt. Eighteen rounds _wasted_. I hadn’t performed that badly in my entire _life_.  
  
“Never mind.” Piper said looking around the area, “We need to get out of here before...” She was interrupted as a great voice boomed over the area.  
  
“YOU KILL MY DOG! I KILL!”  
  
“His owner shows up.” Piper finished lamely, spinning to face the direction the hound came from.  
  
If I thought that seeing ghouls in the flesh for the first time was crazy, it was nothing on seeing a super-mutant. It was one thing to see them in-game and read the fluff about how they were three meters tall and mountains of muscles, it was another thing entirely to see one charging at you holding a sledgehammer in one hand with the ease I’d hold a breadstick.   
  
He was fucking _massive_ , ugly, and god-damn _mad_. His skin was dark green, his face a twisted parody of humanity with little tufts of dirty and matted hair on his otherwise bald head. He was so comically over-muscled that he make 70s ear Schwarzenegger looked like a pencil neck.  
  
“Don’t just stand there, shoot the fucker!” Piper yelled at me as she dropped to one knee and starting shooting at the mutant’s legs. Clearly she was much better at this whole survival thing than I was. Unfortunately she was also using a puny little gun with terrible accuracy against a moving target.  
  
I dropped my rifle to the ground, not really caring that if my grandfather had seen me do that I’d have gotten a major hiding, and dashed towards my pack. There was no fucking way my .38 was going to drop that monster, not before it used that hammer to turn my head into paste.  
  
I snatched up my Winchester, ripping it away from the straps holding it to my pack. I was already chambering the bolt as I swung it up and aimed at the charging super-mutant. He was still coming towards us, limping a little as Piper had put several rounds into his right leg.  
  
"Bleed! Bleed and die!" The Mutant screeched.  
  
My hands were shaking as I peered down the scope and tried to steady my breathing. I hadn’t had a chance to sight the damn thing in, so I let the crosshair drop over the charging mutant’s chest and pulled the trigger. You don’t just slap a scope on a rifle and start shooting! The round went high, way high, and a little to the left, taking off a chunk of the mutant’s ear. Not bad.  
  
I chambered another round as Piper fired a last burst into the Super-Mutant, her weapon running dry as she run out of prepared magazines. She scrambled behind me as she started pulling bullets out of her pockets and started forcing them into the magazine.  
  
I steadied my breathing again as the mutant screamed in rage at me, it was less than twenty meters away and still limping. I sighted again, letting the crosshair drop over its crotch and pulled the trigger again. This time the round slammed into the mutant’s chest, right in the sternum and he staggered back a step, his hammer dropping from his fingers, but he didn’t go down.  
  
I worked the bolt on the rifle again as the mutant roared in rage and start running towards us, blood spurting from his injured leg.  
  
Piper was finished with her reloading and stepped out from behind me and started firing again, tight controlled bursts. Whoever taught the woman to shoot had done a damn good job. Unfortunately the bullets from her SMG were doing shit against the tough skin and tougher bones on the mutant. This wasn’t a videogame with health bars that could be whittled down. The mutant might eventually bleed out from the damage she was doing, but we’d be in his stewpot long before that.  
  
I fired again, this time it hit him in the gut, I’d aimed a little low. I reloaded and fired a fourth and final time, again aiming for his crotch and hoping to hit his chest, but Piper jogged my elbow as I pulled the trigger and the shot went high. Fortunately it went high in a _good_ way and took the top of the Super-Mutant’s skull off. He fell to the ground dead, his brains spreading out over the street.  
  
Piper and I stood next to each other, breathing heavily. Then more howls started in the distance, we looked at each other once before scrambling to recover our gear and get the fuck out of there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed Sam’s first encounter with a Super-Mutant. I hope you found it suitable menacing. I still remember the first time I ran into one when I first played FO3, I practically shit myself as I rounded a corner and there was this giant monster waiting. Nothing I did to it seemed to matter and then I died. At least Sam manage a bit better.  
> Mizu continues to be the most awesomest beta!


	9. To be a Good Neighbor

By the time we made it near enough to our target to stop running both Piper and I were utterly knackered. The howls of the Super Mutants and their hounds had long ago faded into the distance but we weren’t stopping to catch our breaths.  
  
“I’m. Never. Doing. That. Again.” Piper said, leaning forward with her hands on her knees as she gasped for breath after every word.  
  
“I think I aged twenty years.” I replied as I slow walked in a circle, no cramps for me, fuck that, I hate cramps.  
  
“What about me?” Piper snapped, recovering herself somewhat and glaring at me with the force of a nuclear blast, “When you panicked and started shooting I damn near crapped myself!”  
  
“Err...” I said blinking, “Sorry I guess, I mean I’ve heard about Super Mutants and stuff like it, but I’ve never seen one before, I just lost it.”  
  
“It’s alright Blue.” Piper said, her expression softening, “I forgot you’re new the area, this all must be so strange for you.”  
  
“Yeah a bit.” I said with an uncomfortable shrug, “The wildlife back home can be mean but I know what I’m dealing with there, life-time of practice and all that.” I shook my head, “Thanks for saving my dumb arse.”  
  
“You’re welcome Blue.” Piper said with an impish smile, “You made up for it when you put that Mutie down with your cannon.”  
  
“Yeah, well I should have sighted the damn thing in before we left the safe house.” I muttered to myself as I rolled my neck to produce a sickening crack. “Ahh that’s better.”  
  
“That’s disgusting.” Piper corrected before smiling, “Come-on, we’re almost at Goodneighbor, best place in the Commonwealth to get stoned... or stabbed. Let's get moving before something else shows up.”  
  
With that ringing endorsement we were off to see the wizard.  
  
***  
  
The wizard’s tower is shit. I suppose I shouldn’t be _too_ judgemental given the whole nuclear wasteland, but fuck it's been two hundred years, clean the place up a little guys. Goodneighbor itself is a rough two city blocks surrounded by bombed out buildings and scrap-filled makeshift walls to keep the nasties out with a handful of guards along the perimeter keeping an eye out.  
  
They even had a uniform! A crappy one consisting of old 50s style dress suits that wouldn’t stop a bb gun let alone a real round, but at least they were carrying _real_ guns. Thompson M2039 Submachine guns according to my new knowledge. Huh weird. I thought Thompson’s company went out of business in our world, I guess that either didn’t happen here or maybe another company just took inspiration from it when they made a new model.  
  
Still it looked to be much more functional than the stupid pipe-weapons most people carried. Perfect for holding a defensive position, throw in a few snipers with high powered rifles and some heavy support weapons and I’d hate to try a frontal assault on this place.  
  
There was one amusing sight as we entered through the main gate, one of the guards was a ghoul in the standard suit with a fake beard and hair piece holding a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. There was a Walking Dead joke to be made there but I didn’t even like the show _before_ I ended up in a world with radiation zombies.  
  
We were let in the main gate without any fuss, one of the guards nodding at Piper with a very disturbing smile that showed the inside of his cheeks thanks to the rotted flesh. Fucking Ghouls man. I don’t understand how people write fanfic about them boning. Yeah Charon was cool, but no-one is cool enough to warrant making the beast with two backs with someone with bits falling off. Either necrophilia is more common than I’d like to think or people who write fanfiction are just plain sick, and speaking as a fanfic writer myself I’m not sure which idea is worse.  
  
“What happened there?” Piper asked one of the guards as we walked inside, jerking her chin towards what looked to be a large blood stain on the old cobblestones. My guts twisted slightly, there was a _lot_ of blood, more than a person could live and still have the old pump keep going thump thump.  
  
“Finn pulled his ‘insurance’ scam one too many time on first timers and Mayor Hancock had to make an example.” The guard, I think Piper called them Watchmen, rumbled in his five pack a day ghoul voice. That reminded me I needed see if I could get any smokes here. Piper wasn’t sharing hers anymore and I was starting to get itchy.  
  
“Huh.” Piper said with a nod, and gently guided me away from the blood patch and towards a bombed out building where someone had set up a few shops. I wanted to go to the left, there were guns there along with a green painted robot, but she pulled me over to the right where there was a series of picnic tables set up and all but told me to sit down.  
  
We weren’t there long before another ghoul ambled over, this one female and wearing the same suit as the watchmen but with her tie half-tied and hanging loosely.  
  
“Piper! Lovely to see you again.” The ghoul’s voice was definitely feminine but again it sounded really gravely.  
  
“Hey Daisy.” Piper replied with a cheerful smile, “How you doing?”  
  
“Fine sugar.” The ghoul, Daisy - what a name -, replied with her own smile that thankfully didn’t reveal parts of her mouth that shouldn’t be seen by human eyes,  
“What brings you to these parts? Another big story?”  
  
“Something like that.” Piper said, her smile becoming slightly wan, we’d decided that it would be better to keep her legal status quiet if possible, no point in attracting people who might be looking for reward money, “I’m looking for Nicky.”  
  
“Then you’re in luck,” Daisy said cheerfully, “he came in yesterday looking like something the cat threw up and is holed up with that bitch Amari over at the Memory Den.”  
  
“Awesome.” Piper said brightening up considerably, “Thanks Daisy.”  
  
“Anytime sugar. So who’s the beefcake?” Daisy asked with a smile before pointing at me with her thumb and giving me a little leer. That’s freaky as all hell even beyond the whole ghoul thing.  
  
Beefcake? Me? What. Okay yeah so I’m taller than every non-ghoul, non-mutant around here that I’ve seen so far, like fifteen-twenty centimeters taller than most. That’s six to eight inches in old money, but I just put that down to people eating like shit, same reason the average height went up in the First World as nutritional standards did. Still I was hardly attractive on my best day.  
  
“This is Sam.” Piper said with a laugh.  
  
“Hey, nice to meet you.” I said, awkwardly offering a hand to the female ghoul who didn’t take it, instead she frowned at me for a long moment.  
  
“How the fuck did a South African get all the way over here?” Daisy practically yelled in puzzlement even as my hand was hanging out in the air.  
  
If I was a smarter person I would have rolled with the punch, came up with some excuse about being the descendant of a group of South African refugees who got stranded during the war or something like that. Of course I wasn’t that smart and I’d been on the end of that little ‘mistake’ more than once in my old life. I engaged my mouth before my brain was even in gear.  
  
“Oh piss off!” I snapped, “I’m Australian and we sound _nothing_ like those ponces!” Honestly it bugged the hell out of me, it was sort-of understandable when people confused me with a Kiwi, but a South African? Bullshit. Utter bullshit. Nothing against the people, the few I’d met were really nice, but we did not sound alike at all.  
  
“An Aussie?” Daisy said in pure delight, “That’s even weirder! How did you get here? Ooooh is there a secret sub in the bay full of mutant kangaroos ready to take over the wasteland like in the old Manta Man comics?”  
  
I was about to reply when I noticed that not only was Piper staring at me with an open mouth and a stunned expression that all the noise of the small market near us had stopped as well with most of the gathered people looking at me as well.  
  
Oh fuck me sideways.  
  
***  
  
“I don’t see why you couldn’t have just _told_ me.” Piper said as we walked along the uneven streets of Goodneighbor towards a place called the Memory Den. She was _pissed_ , though no so pissed as to start shooting at me.  
  
“Because telling people you’re a ship-wrecked scout from a country ten thousand miles away is _so_ believable.” I replied with the lie I’d quickly came up with. I felt a little bad about lying to Piper again, she’d been nothing but nice to me, but honestly there was no way she’d believe me and I had too much general knowledge of the wasteland to pull off something like stuck in a cryopod for a story even if it was slightly more true. I was more pissed off I didn’t get to go shopping, having to get out of there before I was mobbed by people asking questions. Have to go back later.  
  
“Ten thousand?” Piper asked, stopping and looking at me with wide eyes, “I mean I knew Australia was pretty far away, but not that far! How did you get all the way here? Why here anyway and not the west coast? That’s closer right? Australia is the funny shaped one at the bottom of the maps?”  
  
“We came around Cape Horn.” I bullshitted, trying to desperately remember anything from my brief infatuation with sailing novels and movies, I was pretty sure Cape Horn was around South America not Africa, or was that Good Hope? Fucked if I remembered. “It was a pretty long trip but we wanted to check out the east-coast, we’ve already made some contacts with the west-coast, mainly with the NCR.”  
  
“But why?” Piper asked again, staring at me intently, “You’re not going to invade or anything are you?”  
  
“Oh hell no.” I said with a laugh, and it wasn’t fake, the entire idea of projecting power over that distance with sailing ships was just laughable, it would take an Empire to manage that and I had no clue how bad my homeland got hit during the big war, “It took six months to make the trip and there were only about fifty of us on the ship. Honestly we just wanted to see what things were like here, we’d heard some... disturbing rumours about the Institute.”  
  
There that was a nice lie, very reasonable and something Piper would buy with her loathing of the secretive group. It would also explain why I was looking into the hazmat suited people who I suspected to be working for them.  
  
“The Institute.” Piper growled, her anger at me suddenly redirected, “Even people from the other side of the planet are worried about them!”  
  
I wisely kept my mouth shut as she fumed about the Institute attracting trouble from my fictional people and just walked alongside her as we made our way through Goodneighbor. Despite my initial thoughts it wasn’t really that bad, it could use some cleaning, but not terrible. Sort of felt like some of the dodgier parts of Melbourne I remember from my misspent youth, though obviously with more zombies and strangely enough less druggies.  
  
I figured based on the number of people I could see that the population of the little town would be two, maybe three hundred tops. At least in permanent and semi-permanent residents, more in transients. A respectable amount, even if they could fit a lot more people into the area. The problem with that would be feeding and watering them.  
  
As it stands it looks like they rely heavily on trade, though given the smell coming from one of the warehouse we just walked past I’d say they are using some of the buildings as growhouses, and not just for food. Ask me no questions about how I know what cannabis plants under glow-lamps smell like and I’ll tell you no lies. I’m actually oddly amused that in a world of psycho and jet that people still smoke weed. It’s almost quaint.  
  
I’m rather curious as to where they get their water, both for academic reasons and because I like to know if anything I’m about to drink will kill me. I don’t think I’ll ask though, because in a world where clean water is a scarce resource that’s the kind of information that should be held close to the vest and strangers asking about it should be rightly viewed with suspicion. Or at least that’s how I’d do it.  
  
As I had been involved in my own thoughts Piper had apparently led us to our destination, an old theater building that looked to be in pretty decent nick. There was something oddly familiar about it, like I had seen it in a TV show or something.  
  
“Oh dear god, what’s that smell?” I asked as we stepped inside, my hand over my mouth and hand. It was like someone shoved an entire fruit salad up my nose after fermenting in a vat of cat piss for a week.  
  
“Huh.” Piper said taking a sniff, “Smells like mutfruit incense, really nice.”  
  
“I’m glad you like it.” A woman said, stepping out from behind a velvet curtain and into the entry hall. She was dressed, or not dressed as the case was, in a sheer red nightdress that left very little to the imagination, her blonde hair style liked a movie star out of the golden age of Hollywood and her face fit that image as well. “But I’m afraid we’re not taking new clients at the moment.”  
  
“We’re looking for a friend of ours, Nick Valentine.” Piper said tersely, the way she was holding herself likely said something about why she had taken an instant dislike to the woman in front of us but I couldn’t see why.  
  
“Oh Nick, he’s down in the basement with Doctor Amari,” The woman said, shrugging and letting the shoulder of her nighty fall down a little revealing more creamy skin, Piper glared at both of us. I don’t know why, “You can go down if you want, but you’ll have to leave your weapons up here.”  
  
I exchanged a glance with Piper, letting her take the lead was the smart thing to do, she knew the area, she knew the players. At her nod I shrugged off my backpack and sat it and the two rifles against the wall before I drew my pistol, clearing the chamber and pocketing the magazine, and tucking it in the front flap of my pack.  
  
“They better not get stolen.” I said shortly as Piper placed her own weapon on my pack.  
  
“They’ll be perfectly safe,” The woman, who still hadn’t introduced herself, said, “if we let thieves in here we’d be out of business quickly.”  
  
Promising myself that I’d stab a bitch, I hadn’t left my knife behind, if something happened to my stuff I followed Piper and the blonde into the main room of the Memory Den.  
  
There were perhaps two dozen... pods for lack of a better word sitting around the floor of the theater, each had a clear canopy over a lounge chair where people were sitting back with smiles on their face. Suddenly the name of the place clicked into place. Memory Den. They were reliving memories.  
  
I knew that the Fallout verse had some pretty damn impressive VR tech, but I hadn’t expected to actually run into it given it was canonically limited to the military and Vault-Tec. Then again based on the faded logos on the side of some of the pods I’m guessing they hadn’t been obtained legally.  
  
I didn’t get a chance to ask as thankfully we were soon shown a set of stairs and sent on our way. I was glad to be away from the temptation, I could imagine dropping into one of those chairs and only getting up to eat, and maybe not even then. The idea of being able to live out my best memories, especially if the emotional component was there, was very tempting. I’d be addicted within a single session.  
  
I followed Piper into a brightly lit basement lab, because that was what it was. There were tools and terminals all over the place, not to mention a pair of those memory pods from upstairs. There were also two... people... there. One was a woman, the Amari that Blondie had mentioned upstairs, and the other was a man... I guess.  
  
I mean he looked sort of like a human male, if human males had really unhealthy looking gray skin that was missing bits of it and exposing metal bones and other bits and pieces on his throat and face. If anything his chest and left arm was worse, practically down to the bone... metal bone... and he’d clearly been in a fight.  
  
“God Nicky! What happened to you?” Piper cried out upon seeing the... man... who I was now assuming was Nick Valentine, Robotic Private Detective.  
  
“Hey Piper.” Valentine replied, I could see pulleys and shunts moving through the hole in his throat as he spoke and felt like throwing up, “Nothing much, Skinny Malone and his goons gave me a bit of a working over.”  
  
“What did you do to piss off that wannabe?” Piper asked with her hands on her hips as she looked over the android, “Steal his sandwich?”  
  
“I was hired by the parents of his girlfriend,” Valentine said, “they thought she’d been kidnapped, turns out that wasn’t the case, she did this,” He held up his left arm to show the flesh had been ripped off and a sizable dent in the metal bones, “with a baseball bat when I tried to ‘rescue’ her.”  
  
“Will you be okay?” Piper asked in concern as I took advantage of a nice comfy looking seat to take a load off. Plus it allowed me to keep an eye the entrance and the strangers. What? Me paranoid? No. Never. Maybe a little.  
  
“Mr. Valentine will be fine.” Amari said, speaking up for the first time, she had a nice voice and looked to be of Subcontinent descent, which the name also hinted at, “Assuming he listens to his doctor.”  
  
“Trust me Doc, I will.” Valentine said with a laugh, showing a bit more of his internals and making me cringe. I really need to get over my fear of robots sometime soon if we were going to be working with this dude. “So what brings our intrepid reporter down to this hive of scum and villainy.”  
  
I nearly choked at that line, there was _Star Wars_ in this universe? Then again no-one seemed to twitch so maybe it was just a line.  
  
“It’s a long story.” Piper said, giving Amari a glance.  
  
“I’ll be upstairs, call me if you need anything Mr. Valentine.” The Doctor said, taking the hint that we wanted privacy, and heading out.  
  
***  
  
Nick listened to Piper tell her story, with occasional interjections from my awesome self, in mostly silence, only speaking to ask for clarification on a few points. I could easily see him as a trained cop, he just had that vibe about him, like Mr. Goldsworthy back home, I’d been friends with his sons and he’d been a pretty chill bloke. He’d even done me a serious solid when I was younger, sorting out a problem I’d been having. Knew just how to get you talking.  
  
“The way I see it you’ve got two problems now.” Nick said in his gravelly voice, seriously the guy sounded like he’d stepped out of a Noir movie, and dressed the part as well based on the trenchcoat and hat sitting on the counter over there, “Problem number one is Mayor McDonough, he might be a big fish in a small pond, but he didn’t get that way by playing nice. He can and will use every dirty trick to his advantage, I wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t already sent out posters with your face on them to every settlement he can reach.” He shook his head, “You’ll have every two bit bounty hunter in the Commonwealth after you.”  
  
I groaned slightly. Bounty hunters, wonderful. Fucking wonderful. Still they should have nice gear that I could steal... No. Bad murderhobo. Go back in your box. This is real life not an RPG. We’re not killing more people just so you can take their stuff. Not unless they deserve it at least.  
  
“The second problem is that you are actually guilty of what he is accusing you of.” Nick continued as he lit up another smoke. How the fuck does a robot smoke anyway? Of course I didn’t ask that since he’d given me a couple before.  
  
“What!?” Piper exploded, “Nicky, you know I didn’t kill anyone!”  
  
“You just told me you did.” Nick pointed out calmly, “Maybe not your contact, but you killed the guards that came after you, self defence or not, you were resisting arrest.”  
  
“He’s got a point.” I chimed in, getting a glare for my trouble, “Okay so yeah I killed three of them, but you’ve got two Diamond City guard’s on your scoresheet.”  
  
“Exactly.” Nick said with a nod, “I wish you hadn’t done that.”  
  
“So I should have let them arrest me and drag me back to be hung from the stands?” Piper demanded, her temper flaring.  
  
“She has a point as well.” I said, I’m not winning myself any friends today as I got a glare from the robot, “They weren’t really in a taking prisoners mood, it's kind of why I blew the head off one of them.” That was a not so subtle hint that he better start playing nice or I’d be giving him an up close and personal reenactment.  
  
Piper was about the only person I’d met so far that I actually liked. Everyone else had been trying to kill me, wanted something from me, or were just plain dicks. I wonder what happened to that Rhys guy, I hope it was painful and embarrassing but survivable. Guy was a giant prick, but I didn’t wish him dead, just humiliated.  
  
“I’m not saying that she should have let them take her.” Nick defended himself, shaking his head, “Only that it complicates matters.”  
  
“So what you’re saying is that we’re screwed.” Piper said despondently. I wanted to give her a hug, but that would mean moving away from my position guarding our backs.  
  
“No, not at all.” Nick said shaking his head again, “There is always a way out, we’ve just got to find it.”  
  
“So you’ll help me?” Piper asked, her lip trembling slightly, my urge to hug was growing.  
  
“Of course honey, for you anything.” Nick said giving the fugitive reporter a hug with his good arm. Bastard stole my trick.  
  
***  
  
As Piper and Nick planned out how to clear her name I excused myself and headed back to the market. I wanted to stick around and help with the strategy, but the looks Piper was giving me gave me the idea she wanted to talk to Valentine alone. I didn’t think it was smart but she was her own woman and I wasn’t her father, so off to the market I went.  
  
Again I dodged the store with the robot and all the guns, no matter how much I wanted them I wanted underpants more and the store run by the chatty ghoul with the flower name was my best bet for them.  
  
I browsed for a little bit, exchanging a little banter with Daisy as I did, she wasn’t as pushy as I’d feared after the encounter earlier, but from the look in her eyes she was restraining herself from chaining me down and demanding answers.  
  
I picked out a mostly intact pair of boxers with a few patches on the legs, a better pair of pants made from some homespun cloth, a hand-axe, and a pair of sunglasses. The pants felt kind of odd, I wasn’t sure what material they were made of, the outside sort of felt like hemp but it wasn’t exactly right and the inside was soft, like wool but again not quite right. Still they fit and weren’t fresh off a guy I killed so they were a step up.  
  
One day soon I’m sure I’m going to have a breakdown about the dead bodies I’ve been leaving in my wake, but until that day I’m shoving my angst and guilt into the darkest corner of my mind possible. The John Crichton method of dealing with emotional trauma, of course I’ve been doing it since long before Farscape. Ignore, deny, delay, and ignore. It has worked for me for over three decades, barring a few meltdowns.  
  
After picking up the clothes I grabbed some food, just fruit and veggies, a knife and fork, a pack of RadAway, and two stim-packs before heading over to haggle with Daisy a bit. It was a lot harder than dealing with Trudy but I managed to trade the better of the three Pipe-guns I’d brought with me along with forty caps for the lot. I was tempted to buy more meds, but honestly I didn’t have a lot of caps and I wanted to save some for weapons and armour.  
  
So after chatting with Daisy a bit and refraining from bursting her delusions about Australian culture I headed over to the weapons store. Daisy honestly seemed too nice to snap at like I normally would when yanks ask me stupid shit like if we raid Kangaroos. Seriously have they _seen_ Kangaroos? They have claws like a velociraptor and leg muscles strong enough to break brick walls, and they are _mean_. Hell some of them make a _sport_ of luring dogs to dams and drowning the poor bastards. Evil fuckers. Still not as bad as Emus... or Koalas... Then again nothing is as bad as Koalas. Those guys would genocide the entire planet if they weren’t so fucking lazy.  
  
But enough about the evil creatures that people find cute for some reason, I’m browsing _guns_ , which are always awesome. There was a really awesome looking missile launcher with an odd pink decal on the side that I _really_ wanted to play with, but I was forced to assume it was well out of my price range.  
  
The robot behind the counter was watching me as I browsed the wares. I was wondering where the owner was, then again maybe they left the running of the store to their robot. I doubt many people would be willing to shoplift around a combat model. Because that was what it clearly was, even if I didn’t recognise the type.  
  
I ended up picking up some rounds for my .308, a box of fifty, two extra mags for the .308, an old army helmet, and some parts before bellying up to the counter. It was then that I learned that the robot actually _owned_ the shop and was named Kleo. Very weird, she self-identified as a female and even had a tweaked voice modulator. She kind of gave me the vibe that she had a plan to kill everyone in the area in a dozen different ways if the need arose.  
  
I traded my two pipe pistols and ten caps for my pickings and the right to use her little workshop for a few hours while Piper was busy. I had _plans_ for my current weapons and while some of the stuff she was selling looked interesting I didn’t have the money for it. Though she offered me a nice amount for my armour, but I turned down that as I liked having something between me and death.  
  
I started off working on my .308 and the first thing I did was strip it down completely and let my new skills take over. Now before I woke up in this crapsack world I’d been semi-decent at maintaining my firearms, but I wasn’t a gunsmith. Now however I knew a lot more than I considered healthy.  
  
The first thing I did was junk the receiver, using some of the parts I’d purchased to rework it into a semi-automatic version using simple blowback to cycle the rounds. It didn’t even take that long, honestly the hardest part was cutting down the bolt action into something smaller. Once that was done I tested my work to make sure it wasn’t going to explode on me, putting a handful of rounds through it at Kleo’s range in the basement. It worked fine after a little tuning to remove the grabbyness of the action.  
  
The next thing I did was make myself a nifty little arrowhead shaped reactive muzzle brake, similar to what you’d see on the iconic Barrett M82. That took some more work to get right, but it was worth it. A muzzle brake serves to redirect the gases released when you fire to reduce recoil and allow you to keep the barrel on your target for follow up shots.  
  
The final thing I did with the rifle was work on the stock, replacing the frayed and worn padding at the butt with some scavenged rubber. I’d have liked to have serrated  
the edges but after a few attempts I found my new skills didn’t cover that particular skill so I stuck with a flat pad.  
  
Another trip to the basement and I was pretty damn pleased with my rifle, it fired smoothly and now that I had the scope calibrated it was accurate as hell. Between my pistol, my .38 rifle, and the winchester I had most of my bases covered when it came to blowing things apart.  
  
I briefly considered making a suppressor for the rifle, but the cost in terms of performance wasn’t worth it, so I went with the sensible option of making one for my .38 instead. The round was much quieter already than the .308 and I didn’t feel bad about screwing with the barrel on the handmade weapon to make the suppressor screw in.  
  
I was about to start on my pistol when Piper showed up looking for me, it seems she and Nick had decided on a plan and wanted my input. It was time to stop playing with my toys and put them to use.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: No combat this time, not totally happy with this chapter, seemed a little bleh, but I needed to get some things out of the way. The economy isn’t perfect either, but I’m fudging things lower because there is no way people carry around thousands of bottlecaps.  
> So Sam makes up more stories about where he is from... All this lying is going to bite him in the backside later isn’t it? :p  
> Thanks again for @Mizu for his awesome betaing help.


	10. Be our Valentine?

  
Apparently we couldn’t just sneak back into Diamond City and shoot the Mayor in the face... Because that would too bloody easy... Also according to Nick who had gotten in touch with his secretary Diamond City was on lockdown due to ‘possible synth infiltration’.  
  
It was clear to me that Mayor McDonough was in full on ass covering mode, his little plan to discredit Piper had worked to a degree, but she was on the loose and the squad he sent after her was dead. Now he was doubling down, claiming that Piper had been replaced by a robot, likely having killed the ‘real’ version. It wasn’t a bad plan as far as backups went, the paranoia about synths was strong, so even people who knew her wouldn’t be sure who to trust.  
  
It even had the added bonus of increasing fear and paranoia in his city, meaning that people will want him to Do Something™. It’s a tried and tested method for tyrants throughout history, give the people an external enemy to focus on and you can do pretty much anything in the name of protecting them, including turning the mob against your political opponents by declaring them un-whatever.  
  
The only bit of good news was that Piper’s sister, Nat, was safe, having ran like hell the second the guards came looking and was currently hiding in a bar run by some hardarse Russians. It wouldn’t be my first choice for hiding one of my sisters, she might end up liking pickled cabbage or developing a taste for bad Vodka (the only good Vodka is Polish Vodka), but it should work.  
  
Still it left us in somewhat of a quandary, we needed a way to prove that Piper wasn’t a robot which was harder than I expected, and do it in a way that people would believe. Easier said than done because it had been tried often enough before, by people with much more resources than our little band of three. Say what you will about the Institute, and Piper has plenty to say, they do good work, for a certain definition of good.  
  
The only way anyone has came up with to reliably prove if someone is a Synth or not involves making them dead, and not just in a little dead. So yeah that was out. I happened to like Piper, she was fun. It was at that point I proved I was more than just a guy with a gun.  
  
“So we don’t worry about proving she’s human.” I said from my seat in the little room Piper had rented the pair of us in the Hotel Rexford. It wasn’t much, barely bigger than a broom closet with two ratty beds, one of which I was camped on after rolling out my swag, but it would do.  
  
“I’m not running.” Piper said defiantly with a glare in my direction.  
  
“Chill Angel. I’m not suggesting you run.” I said shaking my head, “What I mean is if we can’t prove she isn’t a synth, we don’t bother, instead we make McWhatsHisFace...”  
  
“McDonough.” Nick said with a slight smile on his scarred robotic face.  
  
“Yeah, McDouche, whatever.” I said purposefully, trying to ease the tension in the room, “What we need to do is get him to retract his statement and proclaim you are innocent of all charges.”  
  
“Oh only that huh?” Piper asked bitingly.  
  
“We’ll he’s a politician right?” I asked rhetorically, “He tried to frame you because you were making trouble for him, now all we need to do is find enough dirt on him that he’ll accept having you around instead of ending up on the end of a rope when what he’s done gets out.”  
  
“That... might just work.” Nick said thoughtfully, rubbing his chin with his skinless left hand. “And I think I have just the place to start...”  
  
“Where?” Piper asked, leaning forward from her own bed, putting her elbows on her knees.  
  
“Vault 81.” Nick said with a firm nod, “The Overseer there had a run-in with McDonough a few years ago when they first opened up, all very hush-hush, but it's a place to start.”  
  
“Okay, so what are we waiting for?” I asked, nodding towards the door.  
  
“Unfortunately I can’t leave just yet, Doc Amari needs a few more days to finish fixing me up.” Nick said nodding towards his hand, “But I can meet you there if you want.”  
  
“No, we’ll go together.” Piper said straight away and I found myself nodding in agreement. Three is better than two when it comes to traveling through this sucky world. Having our own robot around would make me feel much safer, even if all he brought to the table was a guy who could keep watch at night without getting sleepy.  
  
“Yeah, you never split the party, it always ends badly.” I said with a smirk, before getting off my bed, “And if we’ve got some time to kill I might as well make myself useful.” And some money, I added to myself, Piper was paying for our accommodation but my trip to the market had given me an idea of just how long my caps would last and it wasn’t nearly long enough.  
  
***  
  
I made my way back to the market and the weapons shop.  
  
“Back again? You ready to go all the way?” Kleo asked in her disturbing robot voice, it was honestly super-creepy and sent shivers up my spine and not the good kind.  
  
“Sorry doll, not today.” I awkwardly flirted back, I was really bad at that, a result of lack of inclination and practice, still I wanted something from her so I’d play her game, “I was hoping we could do business.”  
  
“Oh?” Kleo asked, “I’m not that kind of girl.”  
  
“I just found out I’m going to be in town for a few days and was thinking of taking you up on your offer from before,” I said, resisting the urge to facepalm, “the one for working on weapons for you.” I added hastily lest she get the wrong idea. Some of the things she suggested were frankly impossible unless she’d been _heavily_ modded.  
  
The robot had been impressed with my earlier work on my own weapons and had made an employment offer. I’d turned her down because I thought Piper and I would be moving on, but if I was stuck here for now I might as well keep busy and build up my cash.  
  
We bartered and haggled for a little while, it was a forgone conclusion that I’d be working for her for a little bit, it was just a matter of deciding on compensation. From what she said earlier I knew that she did most of the work on her inventory herself, but she lacked the flare I displayed, making up for it mostly with mechanical precision and pre-war schematics.  
  
She could rebuild a weapon with ease, but she needed parts and to follow a plan. I could _improvise_ and still have the finished product come out just as good as something designed by a team of trained gunsmiths and produced in a factory by experts. Once again I was disturbed by the strange, almost alien, thoughts floating in my head. I knew they weren’t mine, they felt wrong, my hands moved with a smooth skill that I’d only once experienced while coding. However if the choice was death or surviving by using what I’d been given I knew what I’d do every time.  
  
Maybe one day I could find out what was going on, maybe I’d find who dumped me in this world and punch him/her/it until there was nothing left but blood and bone, and as the great woman said where there is life there is hope. Well my hope is a bit more violent than most, but that just means I’ve got a lot of living to do.  
  
In the end we decided on a commission rate instead of the flat per-day fee she was offering. Each weapon I worked on would net me between ten and fifty caps depending on the complexity involved, with possible bonuses involved for quick work. As an added bonus I could keep using the tools and equipment for my own projects.  
  
That was the best part because I had _ideas_ for upping my survivability. For example I was seriously considering making myself a grenade launcher, the IED that the prick of a guard tossed at me had made an impression and I wanted to return the favour. Of course I wasn’t going to be stuck with _throwing_ things, no, I wanted more options. So I was thinking of something similar to a US M79 launcher, a simple break action single shot with custom shells. It could be used for direct and indirect fire and would give me options.  
  
My brain was filled with all sorts of ideas for shells, everything from smoke shells and frag grenades to explosive sabot rounds. I’d like to see the Super Mutant who could shrug off a grenade exploding _inside_ their body... Actually no I wouldn’t. That would be bad. Very very bad. Still it wouldn’t be something for everyday use, I was already pretty weighed down with a pistol and two rifles, not to mention the supplies in my pack.  
  
Speaking of my rifles I was seriously considering what to do with my .38 pipe-gun. It was useful in close quarters and the ammunition was plentiful, but it was terrible at range and frankly too underpowered to be effective on the _things_ that called this land home.  
  
My first thought was to rechamber it in something more powerful, either .308 like my Winchester, or .45 ACP. No matter which I chose it would give it a significant upgrade in kick, but it would leave me with a bunch of worthless ammo. Then I remembered that Piper’s SMG used it, so it wouldn’t be wasted.  
  
I dropped the idea pretty quickly, rechambering the weapon was viable but it was just so... Dull. I had all this knowledge crammed inside my head and I was practically _itching_ to try it. So after telling Kleo I’d be back in the morning to start work I returned to the hotel and grabbed the notepad and pen that I snagged all the way back in Vault 111 and got to work.  
  
Had it really been less than two weeks since I woke up here? It felt so much longer.  
  
***  
  
Three days later Nick was finally finished with his repairs and we were ready to take off. I hadn’t spent much time with my two companions, alternating between work, and our hotel room. I don’t know what Piper was doing during that time, since she generally came in after I’d already sacked out and was still sleeping when I left for work.  
  
I got on pretty well with Kleo once I got accustomed to her flirting with anything ambulatory. I swear either that ‘bot has developed self-awareness or there is a programmer out there somewhere with a lot to answer for. Still I was a fairly modern guy, I had friends of all sexualities and gender identities, so I caught on pretty quickly. I think that endeared me to the killbot.  
  
I’d spent most of my time repairing and restoring old weapons from her stock. I also fixed up a few guns for the local Watchmen, and even tuned a laser rifle that some dodgy looking bloke in camo brought in. It was pretty odd to get a tip, though I’d have prefered raw cash instead of the Bloatfly gland he gave me... Apparently if you boil it you can make a tea that gives one hell of a high. I wouldn’t know because as soon as he was out of sight I dumped it in the nearest trash can.  
  
I mean hell, I’ve drunk my fair share of booze and experimented with a few other mind altering substances but there is a limit to what I’ll try and something from a giant insect is right up there on the list, somewhere below heroin but above licking a frog.  
  
All up I’d done about thirty weapons total while I was ‘on the clock’. I figure Kleo would have owed me around four hundred caps give or take if I hadn’t taken advantage of the equipment laying around for my own projects, I got a discount but it ate into my earnings all the same, so I walked away with two hundred and fifty, plus another eighty-five for my old pipe-rifle.  
  
Yeah I didn’t end up doing anything with my old rifle and after I finished my other project there wasn’t much point keeping it around. Of course I’d always had trouble keeping money in my pocket so out of the caps I had I spent another bunch on more stim-packs, radiation meds, my share of the hotel room, and some sundry supplies for our trip such as food, a shaving kit, and a carton of smokes. But even with all those expenses the lion’s share went on my little project. Speaking of my project, Piper was staring at it as I strapped on my backpack in our hotel room.  
  
“What the hell is that monstrosity?” She demanded to know with her hands on her hips.  
  
“She doesn’t mean it Baby.” I said to my new gun, hamming it up a little, “She just doesn't see your inner beauty like I do.”  
  
“Oh great, you’ve cranked.” Piper said throwing her hands up in the air.  
  
“Oh relax Angel. I’m still the same semi-sane guy as always.” I said with a laugh.  
  
“Well at least you didn’t claim to be totally sane,” Piper said with a sly smile, “but you didn’t answer my question, what is _that_?” She pointed at my gun.  
  
“This,” I gave my weapon a heft, “is the MK1 Endeavour Industries Personal Defence Coilgun. Or as I like to call her Baby.”  
  
“I understood all those words on their own, but the sentence didn’t make any sense.” Piper said flatly.  
  
“Fine.” I huffed, “It’s a coilgun, that means instead of using a powder charge to move a bullet down the barrel it uses magnets, which means I can have a larger projectile, in this case an iron slug roughly the same size as the bullet on a 7.62×39mm round, at a higher muzzle velocity. Around twelve hundred meters per second, a little over half again as high as the nominal load on a standard round of the same size.”  
  
“I refer you to my previous statement.” Piper said flatly, her eyes slightly glazed.  
  
“Bullet goes here.” I said like I was talking to a child as I pointed at the twenty four round magazine I had constructed, “Then I pull trigger, magnets zip bullet out, bad guy fall over. Bye. Bye.”  
  
“He must never meet Arturo.” Piper muttered before shaking her head, “Whatever, if you’re finished nerding out over your new toy Nick is waiting for us.” She picked up her own bag and headed out of the room.  
  
I pouted but followed her anyway. I was really proud of Baby, she was a bit rough, but she was just a prototype after all and the next version, I was already planning one, would be better. My coilgun looked kind of like an [ MP40](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP_40) with a folding metal stock, a shorter magazine, and a thicker barrel to hold the magnets.  
  
I’d have liked a few more days to smooth out the appearance but I didn’t have it, so I went with rough and reliable over pretty. Honestly the hardest part was getting the semi-automatic action to work, it took a fair bit of fiddling as I couldn’t use either a blow-back or gas operated system, so I fell back on magnets again to work the action on a slight delay.  
  
I’d put around two hundred rounds through it and based on some rough math it was three hundred and twenty rounds per minute, or five point three rounds per second. Not exactly top of the line but fast enough for my purposes. The magazine only held twenty four rounds, though I had made six mags total and two hundred rounds.  
  
The magazines themselves were easy enough to change but the tricky part was the ‘microfusion cell’ that I got off Kleo to power the entire setup. Each cell held enough charge for sixty shots give or take five, and I hadn’t managed to get it into an easy to remove part of the weapon proper, so it took about thirty seconds to change over.  
  
Still I had a weapon that was much more deadly than the puny .38 that had served me well enough and enough ammo to fight a decent skirmish. The best thing? The cells were plentiful and the iron rounds could be made from any old scrap. Granted I needed a way to melt it down and shape it, but it was enough enough to come by.  
  
One of the good things about the microfusion cells was they didn’t work like they did in game, where one shot equaled one cell, instead they were basically a highly dense rechargeable battery. Depending on the power used in each shot one could give your weapon one shot or a hundred.  
  
The weapon itself was pretty damn quiet, though hardly something people would miss, had no flash thanks to no gunpowder, and only slight recoil. I’d considered adding a scope, but I had built the gun for fairly close quarters, which is why I based it on the old German weapon, and I had the Winchester for ranged duties. All in all I was happy with myself and my new toy.  
  
“Come on already.” Piper said, a little whine in her voice, “Or are you going to stand there fondling your gun all day?”  
  
“Philistine.” I muttered to myself and started down the stairs, ignoring the look the Ghoul in a trench coat was giving me. Fucker was crazy, he kept muttering to himself whenever I saw him in the hall, I half suspected he was about to turn feral. I wonder if I should shoot him now and save myself the possible face eating later? I had installed a suppressor on my pistol after all and there was no-one else around.  
  
No. Bad Sam. No killing people on the off chance they’ll eat your face sometime in the future. Murder is bad. Most of the time. Still if he’s still acting creepy next time I’m here I’ll need to keep an eye on him. I still wish I’d managed to make that grenade launcher.  
  
***  
  
Nick didn’t make any comment on Baby when we met up with him just outside the main gates of Goodneighbor, just gave it a long look before shaking his head and turning to Piper. I was offended anyway.  
  
“Everything handled?” The Synth detective asked the reporter. He was looking much better, there was still skin missing on his face but it didn’t look like tattered leather anymore.  
  
“Yeah, we’re good to go.” Piper replied, checking her little SMG before holstering it after she was satisfied.  
  
“What about that merc you were talking with last night in the bar?” Nick asked, unlike the pair of us he wasn’t carrying a backpack, lucky bastard didn’t need food or water or any other supplies really.  
  
“He took a job guarding a caravan to the Pitt.” Piper said shaking her head, “Something about the Gunner’s wanting his head.”  
  
“The Pitt?” I asked, “I’ve heard about that place, isn’t it some hellhole run by cultists?” I had vague memories of the DLC since I’d only played it the once, I’d hated the bloody thing. Taking away my gear was a surefire way to piss me off in a game.  
  
“It use to be.” Nick replied, “About a decade ago someone rolled in and cleaned it up, supposed to be recovering now.”  
  
“Yeah, they’re even starting to export steel again.” Piper said with a nod. “I think that’s what the caravan MacCready’s guarding is going for, taking up some seeds and grain and bringing back steel goods.”  
  
“Pity.” Nick said, “We could have used an extra gun.”  
  
“Yeah, but if the Gunners are really after him we don’t need the extra hassle.” Piper pointed out before turning to me, “The Gunners are a major mercenary outfit with lots of heavy firepower.”  
  
“Raiders putting on airs is what they are.” Nick said, his synthetic face twisting. “They dress up their thuggery in uniforms and ranks, but they’re just as bad as the rest of the scum.”  
  
“No arguement here.” Piper said with a shrug. “I heard all about what they did in Quincy from the refugees who got away.” She shivered slightly, hugging herself in her big red coat, “It’s enough to give a girl nightmares.”  
  
“What happened in Quincy?” I asked hesitantly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Man’s inhumanity to man was truly boundless.  
  
“Ahh...” Piper started but Nick was looking annoyed, “I’ll tell you later, we need to get a move on.”  
  
“Okay.” I said with a shrug as we started to walk, “I know I’m new to the area and all that, but isn’t the place we’re heading to the west?” We were walking north and I was a little confused.  
  
“It is,” Nick said, “but so is Diamond City, so we’re going north and looping around, which will let us avoid it and the worst infestations in downtown.” He gave me a look, a quirk of a smile on his synthetic lips, “Unless you want to fight more Super Mutants?”  
  
“No. I’m good.” I said quickly, “A nice long hike sounds like just the thing, yes sir, that sounds great.”  
  
With any luck we’ll get all the way there without something trying to kill my stupid ass.  
  
***  
  
Several hours later I was kicking myself for taunting Murphy as literal fucking sea monsters were trying to eat my face. One moment we were walking along the street near the coast heading towards a bridge that would let us cross the Charles and make it to Bunker Hill before night, the next there was a skittering sound as a half dozen green shelled monstrosities practically exploded out of the water and charged at us.  
  
Nick reacted first, those robotic reflexes must be nice, his revolver springing from his holster and spitting fire from the hip like an old west gunslinger. The first Mirelurk rocked back as the big hand cannon boomed once, then twice, and the heavy .44 magnum ripped into the hard carapace. As the beast reared back in shock Nick fired again, this time the bullet imbedding itself right in the newly exposed face of the sea monster.  
  
Piper’s little SMG spat out fire in tight bursts but I couldn’t tell if she was hitting anything or if the tiny rounds were actually doing anything, I was too busy shrugging off my backpack so I could move freely. It hit the ground with a heavy thump and I winced at the idea that I might have damaged my rifle, but I didn’t have time to check, I was already swinging up Baby.  
  
I pulled the trigger and nothing happened. I swore as I realised she was still ‘safe’, the connection between the battery and the rest of the rifle cut by a switch. I flicked it up and aimed at the nearest Mirelurk. It was less than a four meters away, slime and water dripping from its grotesque form.  
  
With a snarl I pulled the trigger again, the soft recoil of the coilgun kissing my shoulder. Just because they used magnets instead of gunpowder it doesn’t mean they are immune to Newton's third law, it just means it is much less than that of a similar calibre standard weapon.  
  
One of the major disadvantage of Baby was that she wasn’t all that accurate, not compared to my Winchester, but at the ranges I was expecting to use her at that wouldn’t be a problem. As such the six centimeter long dart shaped one hundred and twenty gram projectile slammed right into the Mirelurk without a problem. Which of course was a problem in and of itself since it didn’t _stop_ inside the sea monster.  
  
Instead of staying inside the nasty creature and bouncing around like a good little bit of iron, doing all sorts of horrific damage to its internal organs, the slug went out the otherwise leaving a neat little hole. Over-penetration is a real thing and something I hadn’t considered in my desire for something powerful.  
  
“Fuuuuuuuck!” I screamed as I did the only thing I could do, I fired again, and again, each projectile hitting the Mirelurk in its hard shell and doing the same damn thing. I swore to myself if I came out of this little fight alive I’d spend all night carving crosshatches on my rounds, it wouldn’t be as good as true hollow points but it would work well enough to get them to expand a little and actually stand a chance of _killing_ what I was shooting at.  
  
By the sixth round the Mirelurk looked more like swiss cheese than anything menacing but it was _still_ coming towards me and was less than a meter away when it fell to the ground, either from blood loss or my last round finally hit something vital. I spun looking for more threats and saw one advancing on Piper as she back-peddled away from it, firing bursts one after the other and doing nothing more than annoying it.  
  
Dropping to a knee I took careful aim at the menacing Mirelurk and fired once, the iron slug cutting right through its hardened carapace along the side and ripping through its face as well. The sound it made was horrifying, but it died a second later and then there was blissful silence.  
  
I looked around and saw Nick reloading his weapon with loose rounds from his pocket, three Mirelurks lying dead in a neat circle near him. The final of the half dozen was a little ways away from where Piper had been fighting when I came to her aid, showing signs that she had pumped at least a full mag into it.  
  
“Well I know what we’re having for dinner tonight.” Nick said dryly as he finished loading his revolver and flicked the chamber shut with a flourish.  
  
Both Piper and I stared at him in horror.  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah that happened. Some people might be bored with the whole gun thing and I’ll try to keep it less intrusive from now on, believe it or not I cut a bunch of stuff about the production of the coilgun. I doubt any of you wanted to read about the materials used or how he fashioned the parts. Still he’s got a weapon that actually hurts people now... Assuming he hits someone in the right place :p


	11. Shopping in the Wastes

In the end we bypassed Bunker Hill completely. I was a little disappointed, the place was famous the world over back in my original universe to the point where even I knew about it, and I wanted to see how it had fared in the nuclear war and what it had become. Unfortunately it was also a trade hub, and where there are traders there is talk. And when one of your party has a price on her head you don’t want to go near gossipy people who are interested in money. That leads to bad things like dead traders and more prices on your head.  
  
It’s a bit disturbing that I’m perfectly willing to murder people to keep Piper safe, but dammit she’s been nothing but good to me and she needs my help. Plus politicians just piss me off in general, skeevy politicians who try to kill people I like need a good kick in the nads.  
  
Sure our plan for dealing with him didn’t involve him dying... Yet. But after we blackmailed him into clearing Piper’s name I’m sure in a few months I can arrange an accident... Fuck me dead. I need to stop plotting murder. This isn’t a game. This is my life now. These are real people not polygons on a screen. I can’t just kill people because it is convenient. Well maybe most people. Mayor McDickWeed has it coming though.  
  
We’d stopped for the night just north of Bunker Hill near a bridge with a shipyard on the opposite bank. According to Nick it would take two days for us to reach Vault 81 and tomorrow we’d be passing through Cambridge. I wondered how the Brotherhood of Steel team was doing but I didn’t suggest a visit. I really doubted Nick would get a warm welcome.  
  
More likely he’d be shot on sight, shot to disable of course, then taken apart to see what he knew and how he ticked. The Brotherhood might be among what passed for the few ‘good guys’ of the Wastes but that didn’t mean they were actually _good_ in the sense that I was accustomed to. There was no Charter of Human Rights, no social media to expose abuses, just the laws of human nature and humans are right bastards at times.  
  
Speaking of bastards.  
  
“We need to work out how we’re going to get inside.” Piper said as she took another bowl of the stew I’d made for our evening meal, it wasn’t much, just some dried meat and a few veggies I’d picked up from Daisy back in Goodneighbor, but it was warm, filling, and didn’t involve Mirelurk.  
  
“What do you mean?” I asked, looking up from the projectile I was carving crosshatches into. So far I’d done about thirty and had another one hundred and fifty to go. It wouldn’t be as good as casting proper hollow points and the rough nature of it would reduce their accuracy even further, but it should make whatever I hit have a really bad day.  
  
“Well Vault 81 accepts traders, but from what I hear they are fairly picky about who they let inside and first timers need to offer some sort of tribute, an entry tax they call it.” Piper explained, Nick nodding along on the other side of the campfire.  
  
“Well I suppose I could offer to work on their weapons.” I suggested, “I mean a skilled gunsmith has to be worth something right? And I’m sure you and Nick have your own skills.”  
  
“That could work.” The Synthetic Detective said with a thoughtful expression, “But we should be prepared just in case it doesn’t.”  
  
“Would have been nice if we’d known about this before we left Goodneighbor.” I said pointedly, “We could have picked up something useful for them. Hell I should have thought of it anyway, we’re going to be asking them to give up leverage on a potential opponent, so we’ll need something to convince them it's worthwhile.”  
  
“You’re right.” Piper said with a grimace, “I should have thought of that myself.”  
  
“We could always backtrack.” I suggested with an internal wince, I really didn’t want to start going backwards, I needed my feet on the ground moving forward, if I wasn’t doing stuff I might start thinking and that was the very last thing I needed. “I could do some more work for Kleo, get some cash to buy our way in.”  
  
“I wouldn’t recommend it.” Nick rumbled with a shake of his head, “By now word of Piper’s situation must have reached Goodneighbor, and while Hancock runs a tight ship there are plenty of people there who would think nothing of cutting off her head for any reward offered.”  
  
“Yeah that would be bad.” I said as Piper nodded frantically in agreement, her expression like that of a deer walking into an electric fence, “So what’s the plan? Because getting there and hoping for the best strikes me as sort of stupid.”  
  
“Well last I heard was that they were always after power sources, reactor parts, fusion cores, that sort of thing.” Piper said with a shrug, calming down a bit, which was a little amazing since I’d be a nervous wreck if I was in her position, then again she had experience at being wanting dead, it came with being a reporter. “Though I don’t know where we’d find that sort of thing.”  
  
“I might know a place.” Nick said thoughtfully, “The old Wattz Consumer Electronics building isn’t far out of our way and I’ve scavenged parts for myself there before.”  
  
“I’ve heard of that place.” Piper said with a nod, “Are you sure it's empty?”  
  
“Last I heard, but that was a few months ago. Just a bunch of old robots in presentation mode.” Nick said with a shrug, “We can always scout it out and if it's not safe we can leave.”  
  
They both looked at me expectantly and I nodded reluctantly. Wonder-bloody-ful. I’d turned down one dungeon run with a heavily armoured tank only to get roped into another with two rogues. I really needed to learn how to say no to women. Bloody big soulful brown eyes, more dangerous than any raider I’d run into.  
  
***  
  
We broke camp early in the morning and headed on our way, making it to our target just before noon. Wattz Consumer Electronics was a shithole, a barely standing building with junk all around it. So yeah it fit right in with the landscape.  
  
I shouldn’t give this universe too much crap really, I doubt that similar buildings in my original world would be in anywhere near as good condition after a nuclear war and two centuries without maintenance. That wasn’t even taking into account computers and other electronics equipment. Hell I’d worked on machines not even a decade old that were fried back home, yet here they kept ticking over even after two hundred years of constant operation.  
  
So yeah the scientists and engineers of the Fallout universe might have been morally and ethically bankrupt, and severally lacking in Common Sense™, but they built things to _last_. It was actually kind of impressive, almost at the BattleTech levels of Ragnarok Proofing.  
  
“So how do you want to do this?” I asked softly as we approached the doorway to the building. So far we’d seen no sign of hostile activity, or any activity come to think of it.  
  
“I’ll pop the lock, then you take the left, I’ll take right and Piper can cover us.” Nick said professionally as he glanced around in the mid-morning light.  
  
“Right.” I replied, taking my place next to the door, Baby at the ready, our baggage already stashed nearby.  
  
Piper was looking out at the road as Nick knelt down and went to work on the lock with a pair of picks that moved smoothly into the mechanism and a few seconds later there was a click and the door opened.  
  
The inside of the shop was just as trashed as the outside, old cardboard boxes containing holotapes were scattered on the floor near the entry point while rusted electronics of all sorts were scattered on broken shelves. I really don’t get the whole 50s aesthetic they’ve got going on in this universe, I much prefer the minimalistic look of my own.  
  
I snapped my rifle up as movement registered in the back, only to hold my fire as a Mr. Handy robot floated out of a backroom to near the serving counters and sitting there, the light on its ‘eye’ dim and unfocused. Nick had told us about the robots, the ones still active were all in ‘display mode’ and a non threat unless we attacked them first.  
  
I eyed the multi-arm sphere for a long moment before lowering my weapon and went back to looking for _active_ threats as Nick and Piper were doing the same thing.  
  
“Doesn’t look there’s much here worth taking.” I said softly after a few minutes of looking around, “The place looks picked clean.”  
  
“Yeah.” Nick replied, “The top floors at least, but the stockroom in the basement is where the good stuff is stored. Last time I was here I covered the entry point up so there should still be pretty left.”  
  
“Awesome.” I said sarcastically, I really wasn’t looking forward to going into the dirty basement of a building that looked about one strong breeze from crashing down. “We all going down?”  
  
“It would be better if Piper stayed up top and kept an eye out.” Nick said.  
  
“I can do that.” The Reporter said with a bright smile, clearly not all that eager to go into the dark room either.  
  
I shot her a dirty look and got a smirk in return before I shook my head and followed Nick towards the back wall. There was a large metal shelf pushed against it and after I helped him move it I could see a large recess in the floor with stairs leading down to a metal door.  
  
“Nice work.” I said to Nick as I dropped down onto the cold concrete floor without bothering with the stairs. If he hadn’t pointed it out I’d have never noticed it. “Want me to take point?”  
  
“If you’d like.” Nick said with a shrug, he did that a lot. I was starting to get the feeling he didn’t really like me, I couldn’t understand why, I was an awesome dude. Maybe he just needed more motor oil in his diet, that could be it, poor guy was backed up. I got a little irreverent when I was about to do something stupid, but at least I learned to keep it in my own head.  
  
I went through the door slowly, allowing my eyes to adjust to the darkness. There were a handful of lights still running, again I was impressed at the resilience of the building. It looked like crap but how many lightbulbs lasted two hundred years without needing to be changed, how many generators run that long without maintenance. Then again I vaguely recalled there was a lightbulb in a San Francisco fire station that was over a hundred years old and still going strong, so maybe it was just that my universe cheaped out on things.  
  
“Jackpot.” I whispered to myself as I took in the rows and rows of boxed electronics. Everything from pip-boys to computer terminals and everything in between lines the shelves. It was coated with dust of course, but the packages looked intact. This should buy us entry to the vault with enough leftover to set me up in any settlement I could name. I honestly didn’t understand why Nick hadn’t taken everything here months ago if he knew about it.  
  
Then again maybe he was saving it for a rainy day, or was simply trying to avoid crashing the market for electronics. That would make sense, release too much too quickly and the value would plummet. Boom and bust. It was a tale as old as time, be it with food, silver, gold, or even in one notable case _tulips_.  
  
Visions of what I could do with some of the leftover parts had me glancing down at Baby. The poor girl wasn’t even a week old and I was about to replace her with a new model. I felt like such a cad. Oh well, progress pauses for no man, or gun no matter how pretty they are.  
  
“Huh. That’s weird, I could have sworn I moved that last time I was here.” Nick said as he followed me into the stockroom, glancing down at a large CRT monitor sitting on the floor near the door.  
  
I turned to look at him, a frown on my face, and that movement saved my life as a brilliant beam of blue light filled the space where my head had been just a moment before with a crack of thunder as the energy impacted the air. As it was it was close enough to give my left ear a really bad case of sunburn and leave spots in my vision.  
  
I was hurling myself behind cover before I even realised I was moving, Nick doing the same thing, my weapon coming up and over the shelves on the side and firing twice blindly. I didn’t expect to hit anything, I simply wanted whoever was out there to put their heads down. It mightn’t have been the safest move in the world, but I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly.  
  
I didn’t know who was shooting at me, but they were clearly well equipped. Contrary to what the games implied thanks to level scaling shenanigans energy weapons were very rare, with only the most elite or most well funded groups having access to them.  
  
More lances of blue light came burning through the cover as Nick popped up and fired several shots into the dim light on the other side of the basement. The enemy fire blew apart boxes and spent bits of hot metal flying everywhere as it made quick work of our improvised cover.  
  
I ducked low and scrambled along the shelves, looking for a good angle to shoot from, and I had nearly reached the end when I got my first look at the fuckers that were trying to kill me. It says a lot about what I’d experience since waking up in this world that I didn’t freeze up upon sighting what was basically a Terminator without skin down to the red glowing eyes.  
  
Instead I popped up and fired three rounds straight at the metal skeleton holding a large squarish weapon with red highlights at the ends. James Cameron needed to sue a bitch. Then again if the Insitute, because these were clearly the Synths I’d been hearing about since I woke up, was capable of producing these things then they wouldn’t be overly concerned about copyright law...  
  
The first two shots missed by a wide margin, my movement and the adrenaline flowing through my bodying effecting my aim, but the third shot, the best aimed one, slammed home. It was like hitting a mobile phone with a sledge hammer, sparks and bits of metal flew everywhere as the Synth’s left arm separated from its body. Unfortunately it was holding its rifle in its _right_ hand.  
  
Even more unfortunately for me it didn’t have the same kind of pain systems as a human who would be on the ground screaming for his or her mum, instead the Synth jerked around and aimed the big ass rifle my way. Sparks spat out of the stump of its arm as I dropped down behind the shelf, scrambling away as a dozen shots in quick succession destroyed my cover.  
  
“By the order of the Institute you must be destroyed!” The Synth called out in a cold robotic voice. Clearly these guys hadn’t gotten the voice software that Nick had, I’d heard more realistic artificial voices from Windows 3.1 software.  
  
“Fuck your mother with a rusty shovel!” I shouted back, firing another several rounds in its rough directions, right through the shelves instead of risking exposing myself.  
  
“Statement nonsensical, this unit has no female progenitor, disregarding.” The Synth replied coldly, its voice completely devoid of emotion as it continued to lay down fire in my direction.  
  
“DIE!” I screamed and popped out from behind cover, thankful that the Synth’s voice had given me a good idea of where it was, and opened up with Baby, spitting iron slugs downrange.  
  
Even as the Synth was struck by at least half of the rounds I fired I learned an important lesson, target fixation is _dangerous_. Because while the chatty Synth was being blown apart one of his comrades lined up a shot on me and hit me directly in the chest with at least two strikes before I dropped down. That’s another of the dangers of laser weapons, they lack kinetic impact, so they won't knock you away from the fire when you are hit.  
  
Thankfully my armour stood up to the hits very well, otherwise I’d have been cooked like a pig on a spit, and the worst damage I suffered was some mild burns on my face from the heat splash.  
  
“Your destruction is inevitable.” Another Synth called out among the thunderous cracks of their laser weapons and the booms of Nick’s hand cannon. I don’t know what Piper was doing but the little burps of her SMG wouldn’t be audible over the chaos of the enclosed room.  
  
This time I didn’t bother popping up, I simply aimed my weapon at the sound of the Synth through all the shelves and started firing and kept going until Baby clicked dry. The shelves weren’t strong enough to stop iron slogs moving at the kind of speed Baby could spit them at. I quickly switched mags and glanced at the rough power light I’d installed to keep track of the battery, I had maybe thirty five shots left before I needed to change it, so almost two mags.  
  
That should be enough. Clearly my coilgun worked much better on robots than it did Mirelurks. It might have something to do with how brittle metal was compared to the more flexible bone with meat covering it. Still whoever built the damn robots had done a good job on redundancies since they could keep going with limbs blown off. I seriously doubted their central processors were located in the heads either, I know I wouldn’t install them there, no, either in the chest with the heaviest armour or maybe in the foot or something, a place someone wouldn’t think to target.  
  
Well fuck that. I jumped up and ran along the row, jumping over a shattered CRT monitor as laser fire riddled where I was cowering a moment before. It seemed like I’d pissed them off, or they’d killed Nick, because all of the fuckers were concentrating on me.  
  
There was a series of booms that told me Nick was still in the game, even as the Synths kept firing at me. I turned Baby sideways and fired blindly at the direction of the laser blasts. Suppressing fire just didn’t seem to work against fuckers who didn’t care if they lived or died, but I was acting on instinct.  
  
A blast of blue light impacted a box above my head, it was some sort of robot teddy bear based on the burning fluff that rained down upon me, as I threw myself to the ground and rolled, my gun coming up as I did. There was a Synth in plain view and I opened up.  
  
It was maybe three meters away and every shot hit, ripping apart the robotic menace with precision, like a doll pulled in a dozen different directions at once. Sparks flew as whatever was powering it went haywire.  
  
That was two I’d taken down, plus whatever Nick had managed. The problem was I didn’t know how many of the fucking things were here. I’d call for a retreat if I thought we could manage it, but I was so turned around I didn’t even know where the bloody door was.  
  
“Surrender and your termination will be painless.” Another Synth called and I felt my blood boil. I was really starting to hate that voice.  
  
“Yap, yap, yap.” Nick called out, his rough voice followed by another boom that took the Synth’s head clean off, “Make way for the upgraded version.”  
  
I spun as another Synth appeared behind Valentine, coming out from behind a ruined shelf, its laser rifle aimed at his back. I aimed carefully and fired low, hoping to avoid blowing apart the Detective. I was on target, thankfully, and hit the Synth in the chest twice out of the three rounds I fired.  
  
As I lay there breathing heavily there was mostly silence in the basement, broken only by the small fires that the laser weapons started and the occasional crackle of the Synth’s electronics firing off randomly.  
  
“That the last of them?” I asked with a hoarse throat, suddenly very thirsty, as I scanned the basement for any more threats.  
  
“Looks like it.” Nick said laconically as he reloaded his pistol before holstering it and fishing out a handful of speedloaders for his revolver and doing the same thing again. “Unfortunately not all Synths are as cuddly as me.”  
  
“Understatement of the year.” I said shaking my head as I forced myself to my feet and wandered over to one of the downed robots. Just looking at the thing gave me the creeps. It was clearly built by someone who didn’t give a shit about making it look even remotely friendly.  
  
My eyes were drawn to the laser rifle lying on the ground and I frowned. It was lacking a trigger or any form of sights. Then again that made sense once I thought about it, the robots wouldn’t need either if it networked up with their processors, allowing them to aim and fire it remotely. A smart design as it would keep enemies from using it in battle.  
  
Of course the designers could have gone with internal weapons like a lot of the RobCo or General Atomics robots you saw in the Wasteland but the humanoid form simply allowed for a greater number of options. Just switch the weapons or tools needed like a person, and after all the world had been built for humans so the Synths could open doors and use equipment with ease.  
  
I sat Baby down against a shelf and reached down to pick up the laser rifle.  
  
“DON’T....” Nick started to call out but he never got to finish his sentence.  
  
As my fingers closed around the hilt of the laser rifle my world was consumed with _pain_. I’d grown up in a rural area so I was no stranger to bumping into electric fences, it was simply a hazard of the life, but nothing I’d ever experience compared to power racing up and down my body in a frenzy as it attempted to burn me up from the inside out. I couldn’t let go, my muscles were locked, I couldn’t even scream.  
  
Then suddenly it was over as Nick kicked the rifle out of my hand like he was smacking a soccer ball towards the goal, clipping my hand in the process. I felt a bone break in my little finger but I wasn’t going to complain about that. I slumped to the ground, shaking like a leaf as my muscles unclenched and white spots danced in my vision. I had to fight to keep from soiling my pants.  
  
“Blue!” Piper called out as she rushed into the basement, “Are you alright?”  
  
“F...F...Fine.” I stuttered out, wincing as my muscles twitched. “W...What... was that?”  
  
“Institute self-destruct.” Nick said bluntly as he looked down at me in concern, “All their gear has it, any human touches it and it goes up like a hair-dryer in a bathtub, taking the thief with it.”  
  
“You stupid idiot.” Piper said, tears in her eyes, as she reached around in her bag for one of the stim-packs I’d got back in Goodneighbor and jabbed it into my arm,“You could have been killed! Everyone knows not to touch Institute tech!”  
  
“I didn’t.” I said, my words coming easier as the painkiller from the stim kicked in quickly, “But I do now.” It only made sense and if I’d been thinking and not coming off a combat high I might have realised that any group as paranoid as the robot fuckers wouldn’t let their tech be taken lightly.  
  
“Can you move?” Nick asked, offering me a hand up, which I grabbed and pulled myself upright. I stood for a moment as the room swam around me, only my grip on the Synth’s hand kept me from toppingly right back down to the ground.  
  
“I’ll be fine.” I managed to croak out, fighting down the urge to vomit.  
  
“Good.” Nick said, looking around the ruined basement, the place was really trashed now, “Keep an eye out, Piper and I will grab what we can, but we need to get out of here quickly, before more Synths show up or someone comes looking to see what all the noise was.”  
  
I nodded and instantly regretted it as I brought up my breakfast all over the front of my armour.  
  
***  
  
By the time we set up camp for the night I was feeling somewhat human, the frankly bullshit effects of the stim-pack Piper had injected into me having taken hold. My face and ear still felt like I’d fallen asleep under a sunlamp and my skin was starting to flake, but according to Piper I should be good by morning, if a little pink.  
  
I was just hoping it would help with my back, because once I recovered from my near death electrocution I’d been loaded up like a pack mule. Supposedly it had been so Nick and Piper could keep their hands free in case we were ambushed and as I was still recovering from my brush with the live side of the force and thus distracted I was the best choice for lugging shit around. Personally I just figured they were lazy.  
  
Unfortunately between us and the Synths my dreams of setting up shop somewhere with enough electronics to buy myself safety weren’t going to be realised. However Nick and Piper have proved that a lifetime of living in the ruins of civilisation taught you how to scavenge with gusto, so they found plenty of crap that I ended up lugging all over creation.  
  
Said crap consisted of a bunch of motherboards, memory modules that looked like something out of the 70s, some blank holotapes, and what seemed like a metric ton of power supplies. If Vault 81 doesn’t let us in I’m thinking of throwing the shit at them, if nothing else happens it would at least bury the bastards.  
  
“What I want to know is why the Synths were there in the first place, and how the fuck did they get in?” I asked that night around the campfire as I drank a mug of soup that Piper had made. It was pretty bad.  
  
“I gave up on working out the Institute years ago kid.” Nick said with a sad smile.  
  
“Well I haven’t.” Piper said with a scowl, “One day I’ll find something on them, anything, and it will break the whole story wide open.”  
  
“Only if they don’t kill you and replace you with a Synth first.” Nick said bluntly, shaking his head, “Better to leave well enough alone and focusing on helping the people you can.”  
  
“It’s attitudes like that that killed the CPG!” Piper snapped.  
  
“No, it was the Synth the Institute sent.” Nick replied drly.  
  
“What’s the CPG?” I asked at the same time.  
  
“The Commonwealth Provisional Government.” Piper said turning to me, “Happened back in 2229, bunch of settlements, the Minutemen, all the big players organised a meeting to set up some form of central government, but the Institute sent a Synth as their representative and killed everyone there.” She shook her head sadly, “Just after that the Broken Mask happened and no-one ever tried again.”  
  
I nodded, she’d already told me about the Broken Mask. what locals called the first time they’d run into a Synth infiltrator that went nuts in Diamond City and killed a bunch of people before being put down.  
  
“The more I hear about these fuckers the less I like them.” I said sadly. “No-one knows where they’re based? You can’t build robots like that without infrastructure, so you’d think it would stand out.”  
  
“Some folks think it's on an island, others underground, no-one knows for sure.” Nick said with a shrug.  
  
“They built you, don’t you know?” I asked, Piper had told me he didn’t remember much about the Institute, but he had to know something right?  
  
“Not a clue.” Nick said bitterly, “The first thing I remember, the first real thing I mean, not the memories I’ve got from the Other Nick, was waking up in the trash. That was back in ‘33. I didn’t even know what I was, just that the world had gone to hell. It was years before I even realised that I wasn’t actually Nick Valentine, just some imposter with his memories.”  
  
“You’re not an imposter Nick.” Piper said, “You’ve helped a lot of people, and if the other Nick was half the man you are he’d be proud of what you’re doing with his memories.”  
  
“Yeah mate, I might not know you half as well as Piper, but I can tell you're a decent bloke.” I interjected, “Hell you saved my ass today and that makes you cool in my book.”  
  
“Thank you.” Nick said softly, staring into the crackling campfire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So yeah Sam rolled badly on his enemies for this mission. 18 and 6. So Synths and six of them! I know that the self-destruct on the Institute weapons doesn’t exist in game but it simply makes sense from a lore perspective. They be paranoid in the extreme after all. Next chapter, Vault 81!  
> Thanks as always to @Mizu for his help :)


	12. A (Not So) Warm Welcome

Our rate of travel was slowed a great deal by all the extra crap we were hauling, and frankly I was starting to wish that horses hadn’t died out in the Fallout universe, or hell I’d have taken one of those two-headed mutant cows. It took three days to reach Vault 81, three _uneventful_ days for which I was very very thankful. Apart from my time in Vault 111 and Goodneighbor it was the longest stretch of time I’d gone since I’d arrived on this world without some fucker trying to kill me, eat me, or both.  
  
The outside looked like hell, rusted chain fences, stacked up tires, an old firepit and lots of Brahmin shit everywhere. It reeked. I was no stranger to cow shit but whatever mutated the cattle had obviously done something to their digestive tracks.  
  
We descended into a cave where the massive door to the vault was located, I mean fuck Vault-Tec, could you be even more cliche? Was the running lava and sharks with laser beams out of the budget so you want to go with the classics? I swear the entire company was staffed by a mix of sadistic scientists and repressed nerds living out their fantasies, and speaking as a repressed nerd myself that is fucking scary. We come up with all sorts of weird and disturbing shit.  
  
The cave itself didn’t look like much, just an open space with jaggard walls with the vault door at one end looking all imposing. There wasn’t any security either, which just annoyed me on a personal level. Just because Vault-Tec told everyone the doors could take a nuclear blast at point blank range that wasn’t an excuse to get sloppy. Defence works best in _layers_.  
  
If I was running things there would be at least three, the first outside, a light one, a trip-wire, to let me know of incoming problems. The next layer would be in the cave. I spent a few seconds examining the roof as Piper and Nick talked to the guy on the other end of the intercom.  
  
Best way to handle it, at least in my limited opinion, would be a few barriers to be manned by people with automatic weapons. Nothing heavy, just enough to slow the enemy down before pulling back behind the door. That’s when I’d spring the trap. Let the enemy flood into the cave on a victory high then _boom_ , surprise motherfuckers.  
  
The claymore directional mine might be the most famous of its type, but it had been around for a very long time and in principle it was very simple. Explosions, like most things in the universe, are lazy, as in they seek the path of _least_ resistance. If you make one side of a bomb hard, with say a steel backing plate, and the other side weak with say some paper mache designed to blend in with the cave walls and roof, fill the middle with some plastic explosive and chunks of shrapnel you’ve got a one shot shotgun from hell.  
  
You could turn this little cave into the anteroom of hell with a push of a single button. Oh it would only work once and you wouldn’t get everyone, but you’d hurt whoever was attacking you badly enough that they just might back off completely, and if not you’ve still got your door standing between you and them.  
  
In short I was plotting how to murder the maximum number of people for the least effort. Oh sure I could go with a gas, chlorine was wonderful and easy to make, but it would be a bitch to ventilate in a cave system, and frankly it didn’t make as much of a statement as turning a room full of scum into chunky salsa.  
  
No, this wasn’t my new skills talking either, I’ve been thinking about this shit for years. Hell if anything I’ve calmed down. I use to be one morbid fucker in my teenage years and went through a phase of researching execution methods and just _how_ they killed people, how long it took, and what could go wrong. I’m great at parties, ask anyone I’ve traumatised with my treatises on the merits of crucifixion versus impalement as the most horrible way to kill someone.  
  
Oh hey, the door was opening. I guess Piper and Nick had gotten us entry. I suppose I better pay attention.  
  
“Oh great, more outsides.” One of the guys in the standard blue vault suit muttered as we walked over the grated walkway into the vault itself. I resisted the urge to flip him the bird and tell him to fuck off. I was supposed to be diplomatic, these people had stuff we needed after all. Yeah I was in a shitty mood, my back hurt from carrying all that shit, and I’d run out of smokes.  
  
“Hello.” A red haired woman at the edge of the bridge, dressed in the same vault suit as everyone else with a pistol at her hip, greeted us, “I’m Overseer McNamara, welcome to Vault 81, I understand you’ve come to trade.”  
  
“Yeah, we’ve got your tribute right here.” I said, drawing a glare from both Nick and Piper as I dropped the sack of crap I was carrying onto the table in front of us with a loud clang.  
  
“It’s not tribute.” McNamara said with a sigh, and a few of her guards gave me dirty looks, the Overseer herself was about the only person since I woke up that actually looked chunky, not terribly overweight, but definitely had a bit of junk in the trunk,“It’s an entry fee that entitles you to the use of our facilities while you are here.”  
  
“A mandatory fee for services we mightn’t even need, let alone want, that pretty much fits the definition of tribute doll.” I drawled, getting a hard poke in the ribs from Piper for my trouble. Deciding that I needed to stop being a prick before we got turfed out on our ears, I shrugged and stepped back behind Piper and Nick, letting them do the talking again.  
  
As they did I tuned them out, only to be accosted by a woman in a labcoat, kind of small with dark hair but otherwise pretty if you ignored the sneer on her face.  
  
“Where did you steal that pip-boy scabber?” She asked bitingly.  
  
“Why, looking for an upgrade?” I asked while giving her my own sneer, “I think you’ll need more than that clipboard to take me through.” My rifle was slung, but I had my pistol at my hip, I gave my belt a little pull to draw attention to it.  
  
The woman huffed and stomped away, muttering about barbarians, thieves, and liars. I shrugged, not caring a whit, and kept looking around, the place looked more lived in than Vault 111, but it also looked run down, which was only to be expected after two centuries of use. From what Piper told me the vault dwellers had opened up because they were running out of spare parts and needed trade, and I could easily believe it.  
  
Still I was offended again, where were the barricades? Where were the machinegun nest, or the murder-holes? Where were the spike-strips ready to be rolled out in front of the vault door? Fucking lazy bastards. If anyone got through that door they’d be fucked, pretty suits and all.  
  
Didn’t they know there were _things_ out there waiting to rape, pillage, and eat them? And not necessarily in that order.  
  
So as the guards glared at us and Nick and Piper made a deal with the Overseer I stood around looking for ways to unfuck this vault security-wise.  
  
***  
  
“People sure are friendly around here.” I said sarcastically as I finished off another page on my notebook and flipped to a clean one, I was drawing up plans to improve the security around here and planned to dump it on the Overseer when we left. Maybe she’d do something with it.  
  
“Oh yeah, just so welcoming.” Piper said, matching my own tone as she paused the fork that was heading to her face containing some sort of vegetable-laden pasta.  
  
The three of us were in the cafeteria, none of us above taking advantage of what our tribute... pardon ‘entry fee’ purchased. Looking up at the menu I realised something that the games never addressed far as I know, everyone in a sealed vault is a vegetarian, if not an out and out vegan.  
  
It makes sense if you look at it from the right angle, keeping animals alive underground in limited space is _hard_ , and overtime you are going to run into inbreeding problems even with species like poultry. In contrast plants can be grown with much more ease, just add light, water, and nutrients from the sewage system. So long as their power plant is running and they have seeds they can keep growing food.  
  
After a few generations you’ve got people who have never even seen cooked meat, and even after they open up to the outside world, well cultural inertia is a hell of a thing. So yeah, no steak for me. Sucks. Oh I have nothing against vegetarians, though I’ve never met a vegan I didn’t want to punch in the face five minutes after they started speaking, I just like a good hunk of flesh now and then.  
  
“Knock it off you two.” Nick whispered as he leaned back in his chair, his hat pulled low, I was starting to think it was glued to his head, “We need what these people know about McDonough and your bitching isn’t helping matters.”  
  
“Sorry.” I muttered, feeling like I was five year old again, “Just don’t like being looked at like I’m some uneducated barbarian about to eat their faces off and molest their pets.”  
  
“Yeah well I’d be lying if I told you that you get used to it,” Nick said with a bitter smile, “but it does get easier to ignore.”  
  
“Sorry,” I mutter again as I closed the notepad and picked up a bit of french toast, that was at least decent. Of course I didn’t think it was made with actual eggs. Maybe flax meal, it had that kind of taste to it and I vaguely recalled from that one vegan cousin I had that it made a decent egg replacer in some recipes. Fuck he was an obnoxious jerk, always trying various ‘New Age’ fads, but I wished I could see him now. Hell I’d even hug my annoying racist Aunty right about now.  
  
I also felt vaguely guilty of complaining to a Synth about people staring at me. It was kind of like bitching about racism to a black dude. A pretty shitty thing to do all in all.  
  
Still I hated being stared at.  
  
***  
  
An hour later I was propping up one of the walls as I watched the people go about their day in the large common area. Nick and Piper were off talking to the Overseer, trying to get the blackmail info from her, and it had been politely suggested that I didn’t come along. Something about my attitude being abrasive.  
  
Maybe I was just in a shitty mood, or maybe it was being inside a vault, the same place my world had gone from reasonable-with-a-splash-of-shit to out and out shit. Then again it might just be the fluro-lights, those things always gave me a headache. I couldn’t honestly say, my skin itched and I wanted to _do_ something, build something, kill something, _anything_ , so long as it was productive.  
  
“Oh hi! You’re one of the traders.” A dark-skinned young woman said with a happy smile as she came up to me. She was pretty in a skinny sort of way, and maybe nineteen at the most.  
  
“That’s us.” I said laconically, refraining from my first urge of rolling my eyes and saying something sarcastic about the actual clothes instead of the blue pajamas giving us away. I might be in a shitty mood, but there was no reason to be mean to someone just trying to be nice, which was a first since I’d gotten to this hole in the ground.  
  
“I’m Katy Pinn, nice to meetcha.” The young woman, Katy, said with the same wide smile sticking her hand out for a shake.  
  
“Sam Parker.” I said taking her hand, I hated shaking hands with women, I was never sure how much pressure to exert, I didn’t want to hurt them, not that I viewed women as weak mind, I was simply a big bloke with large powerful hands that could do damage if I wasn’t careful, it was different with men, if I squeezed too hard then they could suck it up.  
  
“So what’s it like out there? I’ve only ever been to a few settlements nearby and my kids are always asking for stories.” Katy babbled adorably.  
  
“Your kids?” I asked with a glance, mentally I wondered just how young they started breeding in this vault if this woman had multiple children old enough to ask questions.  
  
“Oh I’m the school teacher.” Katy said, “They all want to know what it's like on the surface.”  
  
“Ahh.” I replied, well that explained it, “You’re pretty young for such a responsibility aren’t you?” I asked, not answering her question. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk about the surface with someone who seemed so... _innocent_.  
  
“I took over for old Mrs. Smith when she passed.” Katy said waving off my question, her face determined, “You still haven’t answered my question.”  
  
“Oh?” I said with a smirk, “What was it again?”  
  
“What’s it _really_ like on the surface?” Katy asked in frustration, her pout reminded me of my little sister when she couldn’t get her way, not that it was often given she had my step-father wrapped around her little finger.  
  
“In a word, hellish.” I said bluntly after a moment, looking her dead in the eye, “It’s not some grand adventure you read about in book or see in videogames, it's nasty, brutal, and unless you’re very lucky, short.”  
  
It was one thing to play a videogame and chuckle at the suckers as I rode roughshod over everything in my path, it was another thing completely to actually _live_ in a post-apocalyptic hellhole. It had taken less than a week to turn me into a killer after all.  
  
“Oh.” Katy said, despondently, her shoulders slumping.  
  
“Look kid,” I said awkwardly, feeling a little bad at my bluntness, “I’m not trying to be a jerk here, but you’ve got it pretty good down here. You’ve got warm beds, hot food, and clean water. There are people up-top who would kill for a _lot_ less.” I chuckled mirthlessly, I was one of those people now, “Hell it makes me think your ancestors lucked out when they got assigned to this vault, it must’ve been one of the control vaults.”  
  
“What’s a control vault?” Katy asked, her brow furrowing in confusion.  
  
“You don’t know?” I asked before shaking my head and answering my own question, “No, of course you don’t. Vault-Tec were bastards kid, evil bastards who did all sorts of evil shit just for giggles. Oh they claimed it was about advancing science, but what the fuck could they learn from setting up a vault with a thousand men and just one women?”  
  
Seeing the shocked expression on her face I chuckled again. It wasn’t a nice sound.  
  
“Yeah it really happened.” I said with a sneer, thinking about the stupid shit Vault-Tec pulled, it really was just pointless evil, “It’s not even the worst either, if they weren’t sabotaging vaults so that the door wouldn’t close all the way to see if the residents would mutate they were pulling pointless shit like forcing people to sacrifice their friends or everyone would die ...” I resisted the urge to spit on the floor, I might be living in a barbarous land but I wasn’t a barbarian... yet “Spoiler alert, it was pretty fucked up.”  
  
“I don’t believe you.” Katy said forcefully, her smile long gone now, and tears in her eyes, “Vault-Tec built this place and saved us all.”  
  
“Believe what you want kid.” I said sadly, shaking my head, “I’ve seen the evidence with my own eyes.” And here I wasn’t just talking about the games, I’d woken up in one such experiment and the idea that they had played games with the survival of the _human fucking race_ still pissed me off.  
  
Katy stared at me for a few more moments before spinning on her heel and racing off.  
  
“Making friends I see.” A voice said from behind me, Nick, he was one sneaky robot bastard when he wanted to be.  
  
“Just telling her how things really are.” I said with a shrug, “So what’s the deal? You get what we needed?”  
  
“No dice.” Nick said shaking his head, the little flap of skin on his cheek showing the metal internals, “Whatever she has on McDonough she doesn’t want to give it up, and it must be big, because she turned down everything we had and even a few promises I was hoping to avoid offering.”  
  
“Bollocks.” I said succidently, “What now?”  
  
“No idea.” Nick replied, “Piper’s still badgering her, but I doubt she’ll change McNamara’s mind.”  
  
“I dunno, Piper’s pretty damn persistent.” I said with a frown.  
  
“No doubt.” Nick said in agreement, “But I’m good at reading people and unless something drastic happens McNamara’s not budging.”  
  
Just as he finished speaking alarms sounded and people started rushing around like headless chickens.  
  
“You just had to say it didn’t you.” I said looking at Nick.  
  
***  
  
A short time later Nick and I were being directed to the infirmary by a pair of professional but clearly freaked out guards equipped with stun batons and riot-gear. I don’t know about Nick but I _really_ didn’t like giving up my weapons, but unless I wanted to try and shoot my way out of the vault full of non-combatants, including kids, then there was no other option.  
  
“What’s going on?” I asked as we went past another of the seemingly endless intersections in the underground facility.  
  
“One of the kids got bitten by a mole-rat.” The younger of the two guards said, “He’s really sick.”  
  
“Well that sucks.” I said, actually feeling sorry for the kid, “But I don’t see what that has to do with us, we’re not doctors.”  
  
“The Overseer said to bring you to the infirmary.” The older guard said, glaring at his younger comrade, “So you’re going to the infirmary.”  
  
Nick snorted and I nodded. If we didn’t want to come along I doubted these two guys could stop us, Nick was a robot with several times the strength of a human and I knew how to fight _dirty_ , but it came back to the same problem of actually getting out of the vault. I really didn’t want to start firing around kids. It was just wrong on so many levels.  
  
There was already a conversation going on when he stepped into the infirmary, but my attention was drawn to the boy laying on one of the beds. He had a bandage wrapped around his right arm, and that seemed to be his only overt injury, but he was shivering like he was wrapped in ice and sweat was dripping off him in buckets. Whatever had bit him had given him one hell of an infection.  
  
“You _need_ to send security down there Gwen,” An older woman with gray hair in a lab coat said, “if they were really experimenting with viruses to create a universal cure then there should be something down there!”  
  
Oh fuck no. This wasn’t a control vault after all, it was another of Vault-Tec’s little games and from the sounds of it one involving biologicals. Their societal stuff was bad enough, but when they started playing with biology that’s when shit got _real_. That’s when you got Super-Mutants and other fun things. The urge to grab Piper by the back of her neck and run like hell was strong. It wasn’t cowardice, it was my super-power, Common Fucking Sense.  
  
“We _can’t_ Priscilla.” The Overseer said shaking her head, “Half our people are on the trade mission to the Warwick place, and we need the rest of security to keep everyone from panicking.”  
  
“We’ll go.” Piper said suddenly, “Nick’s a Synth, nothing can make him sick, and Sam and I are willing to risk it.”  
  
I felt the conflicting urge to facepalm and strangle Piper at the same time. What. The. Fuck. Woman. I’m not going into some dark filled with unknown pathogens developed by _Vault-Tec_. Not even for a kid.  
  
“Piper.” I said bitingly through clenched teeth, from the look of Nick he wasn’t any happier than I was about being volunteered, “Can we speak to you for a moment?”  
  
“In a minute Blue.” The Reporter said, waving me off and I felt my blood boil just a little bit, before turning back to the Overseer.  
  
“You will? Oh that’s wonderful.” The gray haired woman, Priscilla, said practically beaming at Piper.  
  
“What do you want?” McNamara asked at the same time.  
  
“You know what we want.” Nick said, stepping forward, his hands in his coat. Oh great, Mr. Immune to Ebola was going along with the crazy chick now. Wonderful. Just bloody wonderful. This was going to end with my lungs oozing out of my anus wasn’t it?  
  
“You’re playing games with a young boy’s life, are you really that mercenary?” McNamara demanded, looking between the synth and the reporter.  
  
“No. You are.” I said, speaking up, “Or is the dirt you have on McDonough worth a kid's life?”  
  
Fuck me dead I should have stayed in the vault, sure I might have gone mad from lack of human contact and living on radroach meat would have been disgusting but I wouldn’t be dealing with this shit.  
  
“Fine.” McNamara spat after a long moment, “But you only get the data _after_ Austin is cured.”  
  
“Great.” I said cheerfully, really not feeling it, “Where’s the armoury? Because if I’m going into some dank hole to fight mutant rats I want a shotgun and hazmat suit.”  
  
***  
  
The Vault 81 Armoury was in a word... pathetic. Oh the room itself was pretty decent, large enough to hold enough equipment to outfit a few dozen officers, but the actual supplies? Not so much. Plenty of security batons and a few pistols, but when it came to long arms the choice was very limited. In other words it was designed for oppressing the unarmed instead of actually providing defence.  
  
Bloody Vault-Tec. They were planning for the end of the world, that meant they should have enough weapons to hold off a horde of starving maniacs, it was just common sense, and I knew for a fact they’d equipped other vaults, like the one with the Boomers near Vegas, with enough gear to outfit veritable army. Evil and competent I could forgive, evil and stupid? Not so much. I mean fuck, we were in America, it wasn’t like there weren’t guns around for the taking.  
  
Fucking Vault-Tec. I mean as far as scientific research goes trying to find a universal cure is definitely worthwhile but they can’t seem to understand the concept of restraint, or ethics, or even common blood decency and now I get to go clean up their mess. What kind of stupid idiot tries to breed the more terrible viruses imaginable on the off chance you might stumble on a cure.  
  
I just bet they weren’t going to go with mole rats originally either.  
  
“Is this seriously all you’ve got?” I asked the guard, the older one who had escorted Nick and I to the infirmary earlier. His name was Dean and he seemed to resent the idea of us doing his job for him.  
  
“Yes.” He replied with a grunt, “If you don’t like it, tough.”  
  
I shot him a dirty look and went back to picking over their meager inventory, finally deciding on two of the three shotguns they had. Nick was very attached to his pistol but Piper and I were going to be carrying something with a bit more kick, and if she didn’t like it I’d feed the damn thing to her. She got me roped into this, the least she can do was go properly armed.  
  
At least they were decent enough guns for close quarters, pump action, six shell tubes, with pistol grips. I tested the actions and they seemed to be in good repair as well. I snagged two belts off the shelf and a box of shells and started stashing them away.  
  
In theory we both could take our normal weapons, her SMG and my Baby, but ricochet is a killer. No it was far better to go with shotguns when it came to fighting in tight spaces.  
  
Unfortunately they didn’t have any enviroment suits, so I grabbed grabbed a pair of balaclavas, horrible orange things normally used for reactor repair, and some heavy gloves for Piper. I already had my own. Whatever virus was down there was passed by bite, so that meant no exposed skin at all and clothes thick enough to withstand a bite. Well I was assuming that it was transmitted by bite or fluids or something like that anyway, because if it was airborne we were already fucked.  
  
I hefted the shotguns and shot Dean another look, this one promising pain if anyone nicked my stuff that I was leaving in the armoury, before heading out.. I had a cure to find, but before that I had a reporter to strangle.  
  
***  
  
“I didn’t think you’d mind Blue.” Piper said as we waited for the junkie that was suppose to open up the door to the second vault. Apparently when he discovered an entire second vault full of equipment and dangerous animals he decided it would be the perfect place to hide his drugs, instead of you know doing the smart thing of telling people about it... Fucking druggies.  
  
“Yeah well, I’d have like to have been given the _option_ first before you volunteered me.” I snapped, before sighing and running a hand over the top of my helmet. We were both kitted out in our combat gear, she looked pretty weird with the balaclava and heavy gloves on, they clashed terrible with the rest of her outfit, but it was better than getting infected.  
  
“Sorry.” Piper said remorsefully, “I guess I wasn’t really thinking, I just saw the opportunity and jumped at it.”  
  
“Yeah well, next time ask first place.” I said with a shrug.  
  
“You girls done gabbing or can we get a move on?” Nick asked as he came down the stairs into the reactor room, holding a skinny young man by the back of his shirt as he shoved him along.  
  
I rolled my neck, popping it as I did, and racked my shotgun with a single handed throw. It was time to be big damn heroes. Or you know end up having our eyes bleed out our ears. One or the other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah Sam was a bit of a dick in this one, but given his surroundings it's understandable. Piper really wants the dirt that the Overseer has on McDonough (who I also don’t like because spelling his name is a pain), to the point where she needs to ask her team before volunteering them for dangerous missions. On the plus side we get to meet Curie soon!  
> As always direct your praise, cookies, and appreciation to Mizu for his tireless work.


	13. Be Vewy Vewy Quiet

“Well this isn’t creepy at all.” Piper said sarcastically, her voice echoing around the empty corridor of the mirror Vault 81.  
  
“Keep it down.” I whispered and winced at the sound my voice made, “Nick might be immune to whatever hell-bug is down here but I want to keep my organs nice and solid thank you very much.”  
  
“Sorry.” Piper whispered from her position behind me. Somehow I’d ended up at point again with Piper in the middle and Nick taking rearguard. I wasn’t sure if it was a smart move, but at least Piper was in the safest place she could be. Though I have to admit maybe it would have been smarter for Nick to go on his own.  
  
I scowled as the flashlight taped to the side of my shotgun barrel played over a broken desk holding yet another destroyed terminal. So far we’re found nothing of note, just broken crap and actual crap, as in lumps of dung, spread over the place. Far be it for me to bitch about not seeing the infectious hell rats but the whole point of this little mission was to find something to help the kid, that meant information, which meant documents or a working computer.  
  
“Clear left, I’ve got right.” I whispered before turning right at the intersection and scanning down it. I was fighting down the little voice in the back of my head whispering details about the shotgun I was holding and teasing me with all the things I could do to it if I just stopped and tinkered a little bit.  
  
“Clear.” Nick replied a moment later, it must have been his memories of being a cop that let us work together so well, even if I was just doing things based off all the TV and books I’d read, “Which way now?”  
  
“Left.” I said after a moment of thought, that was the way to deal with mazes after all, keep making the same turn whenever you were presented with a choice, eventually you got either to the exit or the centre. It was just a pity my pip-boy didn’t automatically create a map like the ones in-game did, that would have been handy.  
  
Something skittered in the vents and I tensed, my shotgun swinging to the sound of the noise just as a mole-rat burst out of the metal plate. It was... ugly as sin to put it nicely. The ones I’d seen outside hadn’t been pretty but this one looked worse, bit of flesh were hanging off in places, huge chunks of fur were missing, and the look in its eyes could only be described as feral.  
  
“Contact! Firing!” I called out as I aimed at the mole-rat and pulled the trigger. The 12 gauge kicked like a mule, I simply wasn’t used to the pistol grip style of weapon without a butt to snug against my shoulder. The mole-rat practically flew down the corridor as the double-aught buckshot slammed into its body just below the shoulder, ripping out huge chunks of meat and bone.  
  
The sound of the shot was intense, almost deafening, in the enclosed space, and I was starting to wish I had some ear protectors. I hadn’t bothered with it outside, since situational awareness was worth more than comfort and long term protection, but unless I wanted to blow a stim-pack on healing my eardrums I was going to need to do something about it for indoor fighting. But that was in the future.  
  
“Well they know we’re here now.” Piper said, peeking around me, her own shotgun resting on her shoulder.  
  
“Unfortunately.” Nick chimed in, “Heads up, I hear more movement.”  
  
Looks like he has enhanced senses as well. Lucky bastard. I shook my head as I kept scanning for more critters, in a sane world animals run _away_ from gunfire, not towards it!  
  
***  
  
Twenty minutes, a dozen mole-rats, and twenty shells later I was _really_ wishing for ear protection and doubly hoping that the stim-pack would work on the ringing in my ears. On the plus side we found an office slash lab with working power and a non-broken terminal.  
  
I took the seat at the desk as Nick guarded the door and Piper stood over my shoulder. After the interminable boot process we were presented with a password screen and I scowled. Normally it would be a good thing for me to have a challenge, I knew how to break a dozen different system protections with ease. What? I’m not a criminal. I learnt it so I could unlock computers for stupid people who forgot their passwords. Unfortunately we didn’t have the time for me to experiment with a system I was completely unfamiliar with.  
  
“Hey Nick, you any good at hacking?” I asked, looking up over the green CRT.  
  
“I’m a fair hand at it.” Nick said, before nodding to me and we traded places and the Synth sat down to get to work. I looked out the door and kept watch for any more critters.  
  
“I’m in, but I can’t make heads or tails of this biology stuff, you want a look?” Nick called a few minutes later before standing up and swapping with me again.  
  
“Yeah, this is gobbledigook.” I said, shaking me head, after reading a page, “Something about developing an adaptive anti-viral vaccine... Exposing test-subjects to diseases and treatments to see how they react... Fuck. That’s sick.”  
  
“What?” Piper asked, leaning down over my shoulder.  
  
“Bloody Vault-Tec.” I said leaning back in my chair and pointing at the screen, “According to this the mole-rats weren’t the original test subjects, the vault residents were!”  
  
“Kind of figured that.” Nick said with a grunt, “There were all sorts of rumours about Vault-Tec and the other corps before the War, nothing the general public heard, but cops hear stuff, like prisoners getting reassigned to private research companies and other shady things like that.”  
  
“I knew the Old World was bad, but I didn’t think it was that bad!” Piper said sadly, shaking her head, “This is evil!”  
  
“Yeah no shit.” I said with a snort as my eyes scanned down the data again, “But it’s not getting us anywhere, this was the private terminal of one of the scientists, if we want whatever they came up with we need to go to the main lab.”  
  
“Where’s that?” Nick asked, his expression even more stone-faced than normal.  
  
“That’s the fun bit,” I said with a grimace, “according to this we’re near the secondary entrance on sublevel three and the main lab is right near the primary one on sublevel one, all the way on the _other_ side of the damn vault.”  
  
“It’s never easy.” Nick muttered and I nodded with complete agreement.  
  
***  
  
We didn’t get far before we ran into another pack of mole-rats, this one lead by a very large female based on the gross bleeding nipples I could see as she reared up and tried to take my head off with a claw swipe. She was easily two meters long, taller than me on her back legs. It didn’t help her when I put a shell through her neck, blowing her head off with a spray of blood. Thankfully the blood didn’t hit me as I was already dancing backwards.  
  
Nonetheless I kept my mouth closed and held my breath as I kept back peddling away from the swarm of rats that were charging towards us. There was a deafening boom as Nick unloaded with his hand cannon and more to the right as Piper joined the fray.  
  
Things were going a lot better than I’d hoped, the mole-rats were fast but we had both the height and range advantage and that counted for a lot. I really shouldn’t have thought about that, because almost as soon as I did there was a loud _clang_ from above me as a ceiling tile fell away and a mole-rat landed right on my head. Murphy is a complete and utter bastard.  
  
If you’ve ever had a cat jump on your head you know the feeling, only in this case it was a meter long mutant from hell with even sharper claws and a worse demeanor.  
  
“Blue!” Piper screamed even as Nick continued laying down fire on the remaining mole-rats.  
  
I didn’t reply, I was too busy screaming and desperately trying to get the bloody thing off my face. I dropped my shotgun, which thankfully didn’t fire and blow off my own, or someone else’s legs in response to the rough treatment. I grabbed the hell-rat by the guts, my glove clad fingers biting into the tough flesh and _yanked_ as hard as I could. As strong as the little blighter was it was no match for the adeline boosted strength of a pissed off human and it came free.  
  
I swung the mole-rat away from me and directly into a wall, over and over again, each swing eliciting a dull thud and a high pitched whine. At least at first, around the fifth swing there was no more whine and the thud was more a wet squish.  
  
“Blue! Blue! Stop! It’s dead!” Piper yelled, grabbing me by the shoulders and pulling me away from limp sack of meat that dropped to the floor with a splash.  
  
I was hyperventilating as visions of all the bioweapons I’d seen in movies and read about in books danced through my mind. No matter how strong, how determined you were you couldn’t fight off microbes intent on turning you into meat flavoured jelly.  
  
Struggling away from Piper I bumped into a wall looked at my hands first, my leather gloves were intact, no claw or bite marks, and as I pulled them off I noted that the skin hadn’t been broken.  
  
“My face!” I said hysterically, “My face, did it break the skin?” I yanked at my army surplus helmet, nearly choking myself as I forgot the strap before I managed to get it off and then I yanked my the balaclava off as well. I spun around wildly looking for a reflective surface.  
  
“Hold still you damn fool!” Nick snapped as he stepped forward and grabbed me by the shoulders before slamming into the wall. My head bounced off the hard surface and stunned me for a moment.  
  
The Synth produced a small flask from his coat pocket and flung the contents in my face. My left eye _burnt_ as some of the liquid, whiskey by the smell of it, hit it and the rest dribbled down my face before Nick started rubbing my face with a bit of cloth.  
  
“Don’t swallow!” Nick ordered as he splashed another dose of the moonshine on my face. Apart from the eye nothing was burning, so that was good, it meant nothing had broken the skin. I opened my mouth to speak when he poured what was left into my mouth.  
  
“Swish it and spit!” He commanded and I did as I was told, managing to avoid hitting him. I hoped like hell the alcohol content of his rotgut did the trick, because I _really_ didn’t want to die, not that way, not any way.  
  
“You don’t eat or drink, why are you carrying booze?” I asked stupidly, half dazed and fully freaked out, when I recovered my wits enough to actually think.  
  
“Habit.” The Detective replied curtly as he eyed me like a dangerous animal, “Are you calmed down enough for me to let you go?”  
  
“Yeah. I’m good.” I said a moment later, the back of my head hurt like hell, but a quick check showed just a goose egg and no blood so I guessed I was fine. Assuming of course I wasn’t infected with some hell bug that was about to turn my insides into my outsides like that one episode of the Simpsons.  
  
“Are you alright Blue?” Piper asked worriedly, her expression grave, “It doesn’t look it broke the skin, but how do you feel?”  
  
“Freaked the hell out.” I replied, shaking my head and wincing in pain, “But no fever or anything like that, yet at least.”  
  
“Then we better hurry and find this panacea they were trying to make.” Nick said curtly, his own face expressing concern.  
  
I giggled slightly at his word choice, it was the proper term for a universal cure after all, but it made me realise that I could have had it worse after all. I could have been in Worm. Or 40k. Yeah I got lucky. Well lucky in the same way that being told you had cancer instead of Ebola was ‘lucky’. Both sucked but one sucked just a little harder than the other.  
  
***  
  
“Will you all just fuck off and die already!” I screamed as I fired my 10mm pistol into the mole-rat as it clambered up the stairs towards me. I was completely out of shotgun shells and Piper was on her last reload, I’d have thought sixty shells between us would have been more than enough but apparently not. Next time I’m taking two boxes. Not that there will be a next time. This is absolutely the last time I go into some dark hole looking for treasure.  
  
“Geeze Blue, calm down already.” Piper said from her position next to me as she pumped a new shell into her gun.  
  
“Not a chance Angel.” I replied as I put down another mole-rat, the heavy pistol round blowing apart its face. “If I’m going to die thanks to these bastards I’m taking them with me!”  
  
“You’re not going to die!” Piper said, her voice high over the sound of Nick firing at another ‘rat, “Or are you showing symptoms?”  
  
“Not yet.” I snarled as I booted a dead mole-rat out of my way, “But my luck fucking sucks, so I expect it to start any minute now.”  
  
“Anyone ever tell you you’re a cynic?” Nick asked as he reloaded his pistol with loose rounds from his pocket, the last mole-rat dead on the ground.  
  
“Just my mum and everyone else.” I replied honestly. “But it’s all bullshit, I’m an optimist at heart it’s the world that keeps disappointing me.”  
  
“Blue,” Piper said slowly, like she was talking to a particularly dim small child, “I don’t think it works like that.”  
  
I just grunted and started off again, my pistol leading the way. She was wrong, I dreamed of a better future and I knew it could be a reality, it was just _people_ that kept fucking it up.  
  
***  
  
It took another two small waves of mole-rats before we reached our destination, and I was really starting to wonder what the bloody things were eating because the population shouldn’t be as large as it was all things considered. Then again they were diggers, so they could be living off roots or burrowing bugs.  
  
We edged into the lab and I froze, holding up my left fist as I did, there were still working lights in this section and something very freaky in front of me. Three lockers with _flowers_ and folded labcoats laid out over then. A moment later my heart skipped a beat as I realised what they were, coffins. This wasn’t just a lab, it was a _tomb_.  
  
There was something buried deep inside every human culture that I knew about that respected burial places. You had to be one hard bastard not to feel the air cool as you walked a row of graves.  
  
“Why hello there, are you the Vault-Tec security team I requested?” A feminine _french_ accented voice called out and I nearly jumped out of my skin, my pistol automatically seeking out the sound. I almost fired when I saw the white body shell of a Mr. Handy robot floating in the air behind a glass partition, thankfully I realised it was non-hostile before I did so.  
  
“Who are you?” Piper asked as she stepped around me, her shotgun pointed towards the ground.  
  
“I’m the Contagions Vulnerability Robotic Infirmary Engineer, but you may call me Curie.” The robot said and once again I boggled at the thick french accent. It was weird in the extreme. And people gave me shit over LVIOS as an acronym, talk about torturing the English language to get something halfway towards what you want. “I must say Vault-Tec has taken a very long time to respond to my request.”  
  
“We’re not...” Piper started to say but I cut her off with an elbow to the ribs.  
  
“Vault-Tec has been very busy.” I said neutrally, trying like hell to telepathically tell Piper to shut her gob before the nice robot hit some security protocol and killed us all. This was a bio-research lab after all, it had to have _some_ , even if Vault-Tec was insane, they weren’t _that_ stupid.  
  
“Oh I imagine it would be.” Curie said happily, “But you’re here now and I’m pleased to report that Dr. Collins’ mission has been a complete success, the universal cure is ready.”  
  
“That’s good.” I said, my heart beat speeding up slightly, “A young boy in the opposite vault was infected by a mole-rat bite.”  
  
“I am aware.” Curie said, her body bobbing in the air like a nod, “Once the test subjects escaped I was trapped in the lab until a Vault-Tec representative arrived but I still had access to the surveillance system.”  
  
“Will the cure work on Austin?” Nick asked, speaking for the first time.  
  
“Oh yes _monsieur_.” Curie said, “Undoubtedly, it is very effective.”  
  
“What about Blue?” Piper asked, “He might have been infected, how much do you have?” I felt like giving her a big kiss, she was my favourite person now, she remember that I might be dying!  
  
“Unfortunately there is only one sample left, the remainder was used up during the testing process.” The robot actually managed to sound _sad_.  
  
“How long will it take you to make more?” I asked, I was bigger than the kid by a lot and even if I was infected I doubted it would hit me as hard or as fast.  
  
“Oh I’m afraid that is quite impossible.” Curie said, bobbing side to side behind the glass.  
  
“Why?” I asked, baring my teeth in frustration, “Isn’t the whole point of science to produce _replicable_ results?”  
  
“Of course.” Now she sounded annoyed, and when did I start thinking of it as she?, “However while the serum mainly consists of standard components the active ingredient, LC-18, was sourced by Dr. Collins through a colleague, a Dr. Jacob Cabot, prior to his entry to the vault and all attempts to replicate it have failed.” Her voice became excited, “It really is an amazing substance, my databanks contain nothing quite like it, it prompts cellular regeneration on an unheard-of level!”  
  
My brain froze as I heard what she was saying and then everything became noise. My pistol dropped from my suddenly limp fingers as I realised just exactly was going on. It was going to come down to curing a _child_ , and hoping that I hadn’t been infected, or being selfish and letting an _innocent_ die. I was living a fucking _moral choice_.  
  
“Blue! Blue!” Piper was calling for me, but I wasn’t paying attention.  
  
I screamed in rage as I slammed my fist into the glass barrier between me and the robot, pain shot up through my arm as I felt the knuckles on my right hand break. I left a bloody smear on the glass as I pulled back for another swing, only to find myself in a submission hold with Nick’s arm under my chin.  
  
“Calm down before you hurt yourself even more.” Nick ordered as I lashed out instinctively, trying to step on his instep and my good hand swinging back at where a human kept his daddy bags, it did no good against a robot, “Damnit! Stop fighting me!”  
  
I went limp after a moment as my hysteria passed and the oxygen to my brain was being drained by the hold. After a moment Nick let me go and I looked away from the two people I had come to consider friends, feeling embarrassed at my reaction.  
  
“Sorry.” I muttered, “Lost control.”  
  
“It’s alright Blue.” Piper said, she had tears in her eyes, as she hugged me, then there was a sharp pain in my left butt cheek as she jabbed a stim-pack in there.  
  
“Oi!” I squealed as I jumped away and rubbed at my butt, “What was that for?”  
  
“Your hand, stupid.” Piper said smugly before turning to the robot, “What would happen if we split the cure between Blue and Austin?”  
  
“I strongly recommend against that _mademoiselle_ ,” Curie said emphatically, “the dosage has been carefully calculated, at best it would do nothing, at worst it might mutate the illness into something worse.”  
  
“Oh joy, super _uber_ ebola.” I muttered.  
  
“Oh no, the illness the current generation of test subjects carry isn’t hemorrhagic at all.” Curie chimed in cheerfully, “It attacks the pulmonary system instead.”  
  
“Yeah because that’s _so_ much better.” I said shooting the robot a glare.  
  
“If you open the door I could determine if you are infected if you like?” Curie offered, sounding hopeful.  
  
“Yes please, how do we get you out?” Piper asked, shooting me concerned glance.  
  
“I simply need authorisation from you as Vault-Tec representatives.” Curie replied.  
  
“You have it.” Nick said before either of us could speak.  
  
Curie floated over to the console and her technical arms tapped in a few commands and the door swished open, allowing her to float out, a single vial in one of her claws. She passed it over to Piper who quickly stashed it in her coat pocket. It was better she have it, there was no way I wanted the temptation that came with holding it.  
  
“Oh you have a pip-boy! Wonderful!” Curie said, “That makes things much simpler, I was worried that you might not wish to have your blood drawn, but now if you’d connect it to this terminal it will go much faster.” She tilted towards one of the computers sitting along the bench and I moved over to her.  
  
I withdrew the connector on my pip-boy and slotted into the terminal. I was never one for putting off bad news if I knew it was coming, I was more rip the bandaid off fast kind of person.  
  
“Well?” I asked after about thirty seconds.  
  
“It is still processing.” Curie said, still in the same cheerful and utterly annoying tone of voice. Normally I’d think it was kind of cute, after Irish and Russian French was my third favourite accent on women, just above Texan and Italian. It was different for blokes, though Irish was still up there.  
  
“Hmm that’s not right at all.” Curie said softly a few minutes later as I fidgeted, “There must be something wrong with the Pip-boy.”  
  
“What is it?” I asked in frustration as I caught Nick and Piper exchanging worried looks, don’t worry guys I’m not going to go punch the wall again, I’ve gone through the anger phase, skipped bargaining because the universe is run by an uncaring prick, and jumped right into depression.  
  
“According to this _Monsieur_ Blue,” Curie said and I realised I hadn’t actually introduced myself, “you _were_ infected but based on the antibodies in your system you have already been exposed to the cure.” The robot turned in the air with a soft whine of her little jets, “Congratulations, you’re in perfect health.”  
  
“Wait... What?” I asked in a strangled voice as my brain blue-screened again.  
  
***  
  
We didn’t stick around long in the lab, I mean I would have, but Nick rightly pointed out there was a child dying a horrible death a short distance away so with our new friend we started back tracking our way to Vault 81. My mind was still swimming at the test results. Curie had run it thrice and came up with the same result each time.  
  
I _had_ been infected by the hell-bug that was eating Austin alive, that much was clear, but just as clearly I wasn’t dying, something or someone had exposed me to the very same cure that Curie had spent _two_ centuries developing.  
  
Combined with the _skills_ had somehow been installed in my brain and my restored eyesight I had to concede that someone or _something_ wanted me alive. Wanted me to do something. What that was I had no clue, but I wasn’t betting on it being something as simple as being ‘entertaining’ or as benign as making the world _better_.  
  
Maybe it was different for other people, but I wasn’t other people. I was Sam Parker, the universe's spittoon, whenever something good happened to me I started looking around, waiting for the other shoe to drop, because it _always_ did. It was going to be a doozy this time, a giant size twenty two shitkicker, because even with being stuck in this shitsack of a world the good was outweighing the bad and that couldn’t happen. Not to me. The universe didn’t work that way.  
  
“We’re here.” Nick said, his voice dragging me out of my self-pity, as he opened the door that we entered the mirror vault through.  
  
“Thank christ. I can’t wait to get the dirt and get out of this hellhole.” I muttered before turning to Piper, “You right to drop off the cure? I want to have a shower and get some sack time before we leave.”  
  
“Yeah.” Piper said, looking at me in concern, “Are you sure you don’t want the doctor to look you over?”  
  
“Oh that is very unnecessary _mademoiselle_ , I am sure of my diagnosis.” Curie interjected, the robot had been following us since we left the lab and I honestly couldn’t be bothered dealing with it. “I will keep _monsieur_ Blue company if it will make you feel better.”  
  
“Err.. okay thanks Curie.” Piper said exchanging another glance with Nick.  
  
“My name is Sam.” I muttered as I stomped up the stairs of the reactor room, I wanted to be away from the radiation spewing death machine as fast as possible, I knew it was safe or people wouldn’t have survived underground for two centuries, but it didn’t stop the cultural loathing of nuclear power from striking at my heart. “Only Piper calls me Blue.”  
  
“I am terribly sorry _monsieur_ Sam.” Curie said cheerfully as she floated after me. “Perhaps I could trouble you for another blood sample after you have bathed?”  
  
I just sighed. It had been a bitch of a day and didn’t see tomorrow being any better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah Sam is a bit bitter in this chapter, freaking out a lot. Do you blame him? As far as he knows he’s got super-ebola. How do you like my reasoning for why Curie can’t make more cure? Does it work better than the ingame version? Did you see the plot-hook? :D  
> I’m not totally happy with this chapter, the action felt kind of bleh, mole-rats really aren’t much of a threat to our heroes. On the plus side Best Girl managed to survive her introduction!  
> Praise be to Mizu for his tireless work turn my word salad into something readable.


	14. The Great Green Jewel

  
“I knew McDonough was a sleazebag, but that... ugg.” Piper said as she put her bowl of stew down on the ground in disgust. We were about halfway to Diamond City, having left Vault 81 early in the morning.  
  
“Paying off raiders to hit Vault 81’s traders so he could force a better deal? Yeah that’s pretty scummy.” I said around a mouthful of radstag meat. “Are you sure we shouldn’t just release the information?”  
  
“It would get rid of McDonough, but it wouldn’t help Piper.” Nick pointed out from where he was sprawled on a log near the fire, “I don’t like it anymore than you do, but the best thing we can do at the moment is get McDonough off her back and prepare for the future.”  
  
“Speaking of the future,” Piper said glancing at me, “what are you going to do when we get to Diamond City Blue?”  
  
“Honestly Angel?” I said as I put my bowl down, “I don’t have a fucking clue.”  
  
“Don’t you want to try and get in touch with your people?” Nick asked, “Won't they be worried about you?”  
  
I opened my mouth, a lie on my lips, but instead of speaking I just blew out a breath. These people were my friends, they’d saved my life and done nothing, absolutely nothing, that made me think they’d betray me. They deserved to know the truth, and who knows, they might just be able to help me. But would they believe me? Really? Or would they think I was insane. What did they do with the crazies here? There were no asylums to lock them up in.  
  
“I’m pretty sure they think I’m dead with everyone else.” I said, making my choice and lying yet again, “I doubt they’ll send another expedition anytime soon either. No, for better or worse I’m stuck here.”  
  
“Ahh we’re not so bad are we Blue?” Piper asked with a teasing tone.  
  
“Nick’s alright, but he keeps questionable company.” I quipped back. The reporter replied by poking her tongue out at me as the Synth chuckled. “But really I’ve got some skills, I should be able to find some work and pay my way, plus I’ve got a few... things I need to look into.”  
  
Like the asshats who killed everyone in Vault 111 and kidnapped a baby. I wasn’t sure what I could do about it when everyone else had failed against the Institute but I was coming at it from a fresh angle. There was also the Ronnie Shaw woman I was suppose to find not to mention...  
  
“Oh _monsieur_ Sam is very resourceful, I am sure he will do fine!” The robot stalker I seem to have picked up. The Overseer had been overjoyed to see the floating reminder of Vault-Tec’s plans leave her little fiefdom. Apparently my biology was ‘fascinating’ and worthy of further study.  
  
Not that Curie was the only thing we got for curing Austin, the Overseer had seen fit to reimburse our ammo expenditure as well as give us some medical and other general supplies. Nothing else unfortunately since she was giving up some major leverage on McDick. Bitch even took back the shotguns!  
  
Oh well, we got what we wanted out of the trip and we still had the six hundred caps we got for the supplies. Splitting it three ways means I've got two hundred and eighty six caps, enough to last a little while. It would have been more, much more, if the bastards hadn’t taken the choicest bits for their ‘entry fee’. It’s a wonder they get any traders pulling bullshit like that.  
  
I really should have taken the time to loot Curie’s lab down to the bedrock, but no I was in the middle of having a mental break so I forgot all about it. I felt like such as a scrub. If I’d seen a character in a book or game do something so stupid I’d be raging, unfortunately my little ‘tune-up’ didn’t come with the Gamer’s Mind or Invictus.  
  
“Well you can crash with me and Nat until you’re on your feet.” Piper said cheerfully, “It might be a bit cramped with the three of us, but I’m sure we can make do.”  
  
“Cool. Thanks.” I said, carefully not looking at the reporter so not to give away the thoughts that went through my mind when she made that offer. “I’ll try and stick to the rule.”  
  
“What rule?” Piper asked with a frown.  
  
“The one about houseguests and fish,” I said with a smirk.  
  
“Both start to stink after three days.” Nick finished for me, his expression nostalgic.  
  
“With proper bathing and refrigeration neither should be the case.” Curie chimed in as Piper scowled as us. Ahh even in a shitsack world like this friends made everything better. Maybe, just maybe, I’d be alright. If I didn’t get dysentery and die that is.  
  
***  
  
After we broke camp the next morning Nick split off from the group. He was going to some unnamed friends of his, unnamed because apparently you can’t torture something out of a person if they don’t know what it is in the first place, to make copies of our evidence and ensure a deadman’s switch in case his meeting with McDonough went poorly or he tried to double cross us in the future.  
  
The rest of us were to head to Piper’s safehouse and wait for word from him. If it didn’t come within a week we were to assume he was dead and make alternate arrangements. If I had my way said arrangements would involve me, my rifle, and line of sight to the Mayor’s office.  
  
I had _strongly_ disagreed with Nick going alone, arguing that I should have gone with him to act as backup, but he said that someone needed to stay with Piper. That statement had pissed Piper off to no end, and so had my reluctant agreement, which is why she wasn’t talking to me, instead walking along just behind me talking with Curie. Talking about _me_. Yes. The woman I saved and the robot with a French lady’s voice were chatting about me like I wasn’t two meters away. Fuck my life.  
  
“Oh yeah he eats like a starving radroach.” Piper was saying in answer to one of the _many_ questions Curie was asking about my general health, “When he’ll actually eat what’s put in front of him that is.”  
  
I manfully ignored the implication that I was a picky eater. I wasn’t. I’d eaten lots of things since I got here that I would normally turn my nose up. I even forced down _liver_ , okay so I wouldn’t touch the dog meat she brought back in Goodneighbor, but that was _dog_ meat, you _don’t_ eat dogs! It’s wrong! It was like eating another person!  
  
“A healthy appetite is important.” Curie mused, “Especially for picky eaters.”  
  
Bloody women. Always picking on me. Even the robot ones. It’s not fair. See if I sav... My thoughts cut and I dropped to a knee, my left fist going up. The noise behind me stopped in an instant as Piper scurried for cover as well, leaving Curie hanging in the air alone for a moment.  
  
“Get down!” Piper hissed at the floating robot, tugging on one of the arms until she compiled. “What is it Blue?”  
  
“Someone just scoped us.” I replied shortly as I shouldered Baby and scanned roof of the building where I had seen the light reflecting off a scope. It could have been glass, or a broken mirror, I could have just been paranoid, but a second later I saw more movement and another flash of light. I threw myself to the side just as a loud boom filled the street and a large calibre bullet impacted right where I was standing a moment before.  
  
I’ll say this about Piper, when the shit hits the fan she doesn’t hesitate one instant. The reporter popped out from behind cover, her SMG at the ready, and peppered the roof of the building with a spray of full auto bullets. She wouldn’t hit shit at that range, but it would force our sniper to pull his head in or get it shot off.  
  
Meanwhile I recovered from my roll and dropped my pack, quickly snatching up my rifle and chambering a round. Baby was great for a lot of things but long range engagements weren’t one of them, that’s where the good old Winchester Hunting Rifle comes in.  
  
Piper kept laying down covering fire and was soon joined by Curie of all things, one of her claws was apparently a laser pistol. That would have been nice to know _before_ the bullets, and energy beams, started flying.  
  
Shoving my indignation aside I shouldered my rifle and scoped over the six story building where the sniper was pinned down near a broken stone balustrade, or was it a parapet? I could never keep those two straight. Either way I allowed the noise to fall away as I got him in view, he was human and held a rifle much like my own and was dressed in green with similar armour to what I was wearing with an army helmet topping it off.  
  
Or he did, because it went flying when I pulled the trigger on my rifle and blew his brains across half the roof. His body slumped forward against the stone balustrade before listing to the side and tumbling over and down to the ground with a wet meaty thump. I winced at the sound, there was something very unpleasant about a human body hitting the pavement even if he had been shooting at me only a few seconds before.  
  
***  
  
A short time later the three of us were gathered around the corpse, we had determined that our sniping friend was alone, and looking over the gear we’d pulled off him. It was a light load out, so I assumed the rest of his stuff was stashed somewhere.  
  
We managed to snag a single stim-pack that wasn’t squished to hell and back, thirty rounds of .308 ammo, twenty caps, a magazine for his rifle that would work in mine, and a combat knife. Unfortunately the rifle was smashed beyond repair from the fall.  
  
Other than that I took his armour, which I will _not_ be wearing until I can hose it out. Still it will give me a full set, I just need to repaint it in different colours because according to Piper the Gunner’s, who he looks to have worked for, _really_ don’t like people copying their style. Fine with me, I was never big on skulls and other edge-lord shit.  
  
But most interesting was the single black and white photograph that looked to have came out of an old photocopier judging by the paper, but I didn’t even know if they had them in the universe, with an image of Piper smiling out at something. On the back were three large lines of text.

**Wanted: Piper Wright.  
Dead: 1500 Caps  
Alive: 5000 Caps**

  
From what I knew that was a _lot_ of money, more than enough to live on for several months, more if you were frugal. Following the pricing information there were a few lines about claiming the reward, places where she was known to frequent, and known associates, including Nick. The interesting part to me was how much more money was offered for her _alive_.  
  
That to me said that McDonough was panicking and wanting to know just who she had told about his little misdeeds. Typical political bullshit really, only with more blood than Australian politics. Well real blood, it's hard to beat a Labor party backroom for metaphorical blood. Those be crazy. Trust me I speak from experience here. An no you don’t want to know.  
  
“This is bad.” I said as I flipped the picture over again, it really was a nice image of Piper, she must have posed for it. Of course the blood stains took some of the luster away.  
  
“Why?” Piper asked flippantly, “We already knew that McDonough put a price on my head.”  
  
“Not that.” I said shaking my head, pointing to a bit of the test, “According to this they knew you have a safe house in this area, and that’s where we’re suppose to meet Nick, and now we can’t hang around to wait.”  
  
“Oh.” Piper said as she realised what I was talking about.  
  
“Worse we can’t go to Goodneighbor or Bunker Hill either, there will be mercs waiting there as well.” I said with a grimace, “Shit, even if Nick manages to talk McDick down it will take a while for the news to filter out, you’ll have mercs popping out of the woodwork for _months_ looking for your head.” I shook my head, “I’m sure Nick will find us wherever we go, he seems like the type, but...”  
  
“Where do we go?” Piper asked into the empty air. A question I had no clue how to answer.  
  
***  
  
It turned out the answer to the question was “back to the vault and hide near the cave”. It was pretty obvious in retrospect, we had supplies, and the vault made a good fallback point if we ran into something we couldn’t handle. So of course it was _Curie_ that suggested it after Piper and I spent two hours faffing around trying to work out what to do.  
  
It took a little over a week before Nick found us camping out in the basement of an old cabin about two kilometers from the vault. It had honestly been pretty relaxing, apart from the low level anxiety about being found by something or someone nasty, just the three of us sitting around chilling with me occasionally venturing out to do some hunting.  
  
I’d forgotten how much I’d enjoyed the hunt. For me it had never been about the kill, I didn’t really enjoy that part honestly, the blood and guts, not like some. No I’d always loved the stalking, the sighting down on my target, and the knowledge that I’d won. I brought down a radstag and a handful of rabbits, enough to give us plenty of fresh meat to stretch out our rations. Of course animals weren’t the only thing in the woods, there were ghouls, monstrous beasts, and even a pack of raiders but I’d managed to avoid them easily enough.  
  
I’d expected Nick to give us a chewing out over the whole thing, but he’d been pretty good about it, said we’d done the right thing, and the next morning we started our trek to Diamond City.  
  
The deal our friendly detective made was comprehensive, if anything happened to Piper, myself, Nick, or anyone we cared about at the Mayor’s hands, or if we didn’t check in with certain people at the right time, the information about his dirty dealings would be released... widely.  
  
I guess even the people in the wasteland have standards, and having a holotape recording made by a raider band you contacted to hit Vault 81 trade groups fall into the public view would be bad for your reelection prospects... Or your prospects of not being hung from the nearest lamp post.  
  
Nick was sure that McDonough would stick to his end of the deal, but I didn’t share his confidence, which was why I already planning on a more... permanent... solution in the future. If I saw an opportunity. As far as I was concerned he was fair game, you don’t try to kill innocent people if you want to keep from getting your brain smeared on the ground.  
  
Apparently McDonough was already spreading the news that the ‘Synth’ version of Piper had been dealt with and the real version had been with Nick the entire time. It wasn’t perfect, and I’m sure some asshats would think she was a robot, but it was better than having everyone in the area hunting for her.  
  
So a week and a half after we left Vault 81 we finally made it to Diamond City.  
  
“It’s a lot bigger than I expected.” I said as I looked up at the towering stands from the outside. It wasn’t as large as the MCG but it was still pretty damn big. The pervasiveness of American culture in my world meant that even I had heard of Fenway park, not the details, but I knew it was a sporting field in Boston, and it was bloody big. And well defended.  
  
There were automated turrets all around the outside and dozens of guards in the same gear as the team that Piper and I had killed just after we first met. Honestly seeing them sent shivers up my spine, like they were about to act like cops and kill us for killing their mates. Even if they worked for McDouche I couldn’t blame them for that. Not that I’d let them kill me of course, I’d kill them first, but I’d feel bad about it after.  
  
“Home at last.” Piper sighed with a wide smile and I touched her lightly on the shoulder. “Thank you, thank you both.” She said turning to look at Nick and I, tears running down her cheeks.  
  
“It’s cool.” I said with an awkward shrug, I wasn’t good with emotional showings.  
  
“All part of the service.” Nick said as he nodded calmly.  
  
“Piper! Piper! You’re home!” A little girl, maybe nine or ten, cried out as we walked through the tunnel from the massive gates near the old ticket booths, and crashed into the reporter, sending them flying down onto the stairs leading down onto what had once been the playing field.  
  
“I assume that’s Nat?” I asked Nick with a raised eyebrow and a smile.  
  
The Synth just chuckled and wandered off, his hands stuck in his coat pockets, his chin on his chest and his hat low, just like an old noir detective walking off into the night. Or the mid afternoon as it actually was, ruining the appearance.  
  
“Oh this is marvelous!” Curie said as she floated just behind me, some of our gear hanging off a makeshift harness we’d put together for her. If she was going to tag along she could carry some of the crap we were hauling. “Simply marvelous! The ingenuity of the human spirit _monsieur_ Sam, do you see it?”  
  
“Yeah Curie, I see it.” I said as I walked down the stairs and looked around, leaving Piper and her sister to their reunion. It really was something to see, dozens of buildings built on the baseball field, an entire market in the centre, more makeshift housing in the stands, all combined with the feeling of humanity doing what it did, enduring. It brought a smile to my life. This really was a community.  
  
My smile faded as I saw a heavy set man in a faded suit walking up to Piper, two of the guards-slash-thugs flanking. Yep really a community, complete with douchebags. If I was forced to guess that was Mayor Patrick McDonough Jr.  
  
“Miss Wright!” McDonough said cheerfully, so cheerfully that if I didn’t know better I would have brought it, he really was a good actor, “How wonderful to see you return to our fair city safe and sound my dear!”  
  
“Mayor McDonough.” Piper said icily through clenched teeth as she extracted herself from her sister, shoving the younger girl behind her, “How... _lovely_... to see you.”  
  
I stepped up beside and just behind Piper, carefully folding my arms over my chest and far away from my pistol and knife as I looked at the guards who were holding their weapons in an all too casual way.  
  
“Who’s your friend?” McDonough asked, his eyes flicking up to me and his smile faltering slightly.  
  
“Sam Parker.” I answered in a rough voice, my eyes drilling into him. Make a move you prick, just one move, give me an excuse to blow your face off. I can take these two suckers, first one gets a bullet through that stupid caged helmet, second gets a knife in the throat then I deal with the Mayor. Maybe a gut shot? That hurts like hell. No, too slow, they might get him to a doctor, better go for the head shot.  
  
“Ahh... our guest from the far off land Down Under.” McDonough said, shifting slightly back, clearly he could see from my expression that I didn’t like him. Good.  
  
“Yup.” I said shortly, silence is more intimidating then rage I’ve found. Let their mind fill in the blanks, like the scariest horror movie monster is the one you don’t see. Plus plotting someone’s murder while they are looking at you has a way of unnerving people.  
  
“Well... It’s good to have you back Piper,” McDonough said, “I’ve... gotta go now. Important business you understand.” He stumbled slightly as he backed away and walked quickly towards a set of stairs leading up into the stands.  
  
“Well. That was interesting.” I said softly when he was out of earshot, “Think he knows we don’t like him?”  
  
Piper laughed until she snorted, her hand covering her face as she continued to giggle. I didn’t think my joke was that funny.  
  
***  
  
Piper’s house... Well shack but I was trying to be polite, wasn’t very big, and the huge-ass printing press that took up most of the space wasn’t helping matters. It looked like something from the 1800s and based on the faded museum stamp on it I’m pretty sure it actually was from around that time. Pretty smart way to make a newspaper in the age of the wasteland.  
  
Still it was a place to stay until I could find somewhere more permanent and it wasn’t costing me anything. Though I planned to chip in with expenses like food and such. I actually got a bed! Well a mattress on the floor that had seen better days that I could roll my swag out on but it beat the crap out of sleeping on the ground.  
  
“Ugg.” Piper said as she looked over the printing press, “The Old Girl is going to need a lot of work, damn McDonough and his goons.”  
  
“What did they do?” I asked from my seat on my new bed, leaning against the wall.  
  
“They broke one of the plates, I’ll have to pay Crazy Myrna to get another one made and shipped in, but until then we’re stuck without a paper.” Piper said in frustration. “If she’ll even talk to me now! Damn nutjob sees synths everywhere.”  
  
“I’m sorry Piper,” Nat said, she hadn’t moved more than a meter away from her sister since we’d arrived, “I should have been here to stop them.”  
  
“None of that kiddo.” Piper said shaking her head and smiling down at the little girl, “You did exactly what you should have done.”  
  
“I guess.” Nat muttered.  
  
“So did Vadim and Yefim take good care of you?” Piper said as she reached down and ruffled her sister’s hair. “Ice cream for breakfast and candy for dinner?”  
  
“Nahh, but there was lots of vodka in the stew.” Nat said with an impish grin.  
  
“You better be joking or the Dugout will be looking for new management.” Piper said baring her teeth in a savage smile, causing her sister to giggle and hug her leg.  
  
***  
  
My second day in Diamond City started with a bang. A literal bang. I took three steps outside of Piper’s door to see what the commotion was and a guy had his head blown off not five meters away from me, the blood splattering the crowd.  
  
“What the fuck just happened?” I asked.  
  
“Some guy just went nuts, claimed his brother was a synth.” A guy in a swanky suit with slicked back hair said with a shrug.  
  
As most of the crowd stared in horror at the dead body and the guards pushed people away, including a shellshocked man with his brother’s blood all over him, I realised something even more horrifying. I didn’t care that a human being had just died in front of me.  
  
No. All I was wondering if anyone would care if I took his boots, because they looked to be about my size. I’d gone _native_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not totally happy with this chapter, it covers some important ground, but it's kind of... bleh... I plan to have things pick up soon.  
> As always thanks and/or cookies should be directed to @Mizu


	15. The Everyday Grind

I’d been in Diamond City for two weeks and I was starting to run out of money. It turns out there isn’t much call for _two_ gunsmiths in a community the size of this one, and the poor sucker who comes late to the party, that is me, doesn’t stand a chance against an expert who already has a reputation.  
  
Arturo wasn’t rude about it or anything, in fact he was pretty chill, but there simply wasn’t enough work around to support both of us. I mean I snagged a few simple jobs, but hardly enough to live on. Unfortunately he wasn’t interested in taking me on either. I heard from Nick that the other gunsmith had been informed on the quiet by the Diamond City Thugs Association, otherwise known as the Guards, that if he did so he’d be risking his lucrative contract as their main supplier.  
  
In fact that was the problem in a nutshell. I couldn’t even get work as a day labourer or gofer because of those pricks. The word had been put around, hire me and suffer. I mean fuck, I even tried to get put on as a freaking _night soil_ collector, because someone had to clean up the outhouses and human waste has many uses, and that was a no-go.  
  
Hell even Piper’s friends, the Russian brothers who hid Nat for her, weren’t willing to hire me on, said it was too much of a risk. I can’t really blame them, they were Piper’s mates after all not mine. Still it burned. I wouldn’t go hungry or sleep rough any time soon, Piper would see to that, but damnit I’d been raised to look after myself.  
  
Even _Curie_ was earning her keep, working with those strange women in the Science! Centre. I stayed the hell away from there, anyone who added an exclamation point after science was to be avoided in my opinion. Granted she was only bringing home a few caps a day, but she didn’t eat and her fuel costs were minimal.  
  
I even sold off most of my ‘loot’ that I’d been collecting, including the stuff that I stashed at Piper’s safe house, leaving me with only what I considered vital, but caps went _fast_ in Diamond City. After expenses for two weeks I was down to just over two hundred left. I figured I could stretch it out to a month, maybe a little more, then I’d be down to mooching off Piper and that was completely unacceptable.  
  
The damage to her printing press combined with the decrease in what sales she actually managed to print, not to mention the loss of advertiser revenue, meant she was struggling enough already. McDonough was keeping his word, but the key part was _word_ , he never promised he wouldn’t subtly turn the screws on us after all.  
  
So that was how I found myself staring at the bounty board in the marketplace, ignoring the glares that the nearby guards were sending my way. Fuckers needed to up their game. I had been the fat nerdy _goth_ kid complete with dyed hair and painted fingernails attending a private catholic school in rural Victoria during the fucking _nineteen-bloody-nineties_ , I’d been harassed by experts. These guys just didn’t measure up.  
  
There were three notices up on the board, one for clearing out a group of Super-Mutants deep in the heart of Boston. The pay was bloody high, two thousand caps, more than enough to live on for a while. Hell there was a house for sale near the market for that. However I was desperate, not _stupid_. It could be twenty thousand caps and I still wouldn’t go after Super-Mutants without a squad of Brotherhood Knights in full power armour complete with air support.  
  
The second was about a woman listed only as Smiling Kate who was wanted for murder, arson, and cannibalism among other crimes. It said she had a small gang of raiders and her head, they didn’t want the rest, was worth seven hundred and fifty caps, with an additional fifty caps for the heads of her gang.  
  
It was more promising, but it involved going up against insane people with guns that might eat me, so that was out. I much prefered it when I was shooting at things that couldn’t shoot back. Yeah unsporting I know, but fuck that I’m trying to make a living and that means staying _alive_.  
  
The third option was more my speed, a bunch of feral ghouls lairing up near an overpass and disrupting trade. So it was only three hundred caps, but it was three hundred more than I had right now. Of course it came with its own gross requirements, such as bringing back the ears of the dead ghouls, but it seemed like something I could do.  
  
Now I just need to find backup...  
  
***  
  
“Of course _monsieur_ Sam, I would love to accompany you.” Curie said cheerfully that night when we both returned to Piper’s little shack, “It will allow me to gather valuable data about the unfortunate necrotic mutations.”  
  
“Thanks Curie.” I said with a smile, feeling very relieved since Nick had turned me down flat when I’d asked him. I hadn’t even bothered asking Piper as she had her hands full with rebuilding her business.  
  
“I’m not sure this is the best idea you’ve ever had Blue.” Piper said from where she was seated at her terminal, a smoke dangling from her long fingers as she gave me a concerned look, “You can handle yourself in a fight, but bounty hunting is dangerous work.”  
  
“We need the cash.” I said with a shrug, not really wanting to get into a fight, and if I was forced to be honest I really wanted to do _something_ to make myself useful. “I can’t keep eating your food and contributing nothing.”  
  
“You’ve been buying just as much as food as I have, and you’ve done more than just that!” Piper said forcefully, “You wrote that article on gun care for the last issue and you’ve been helping Nat with her math homework.”  
  
“Yeah, maybe I could make my living as a math tutor. That will really bring in the caps.” I said sarcastically with a snort. Nat was a decent enough kid and Piper for all her writing skill was utterly terrible at math so I’d been helping the younger Wright with her rather basic school work, which included the times tables. I really shouldn’t shit on the school though, it was damn near a miracle that there was universal schooling in Diamond City at all, even if most of it wasn’t exactly top tier scholarship.  
  
“Not that anyone would actually hire me, not if they don’t want to suddenly be blackballed by Security.” I continued, my lips curling up in a silent snarl.  
  
“I don’t like it anymore than you do,” Piper said with a sigh, “I really want to rip McDonough’s stupid face off, but we need to keep our heads down for now. Look if you really want to work I could swing you a job working security for one of the trade caravans, it would be safer than bounty hunting. They don’t care what the Mayor thinks about the people they hire.”  
  
I hesitated for a moment, in theory that sounded like a good idea, but it would also mean I would be gone for days, if not weeks, at a time, leaving Piper and Nat alone and at the mercy of McDickWeed. Nick would have their back, but he wasn’t always around either.  
  
It was the same reason I hadn’t headed back to Goodneighbor where I _knew_ I could find good paying work. Of course I couldn’t tell Piper any of that, she’d rip _my_ face off for even hinting that she couldn’t take care of herself.  
  
“Maybe.” I said, “But I’m not really sure if I want to get into that kind of long term work Angel, I’d rather leave my options open.” It was a lame excuse but one that she couldn’t really blame me for.  
  
“Do not worry _mademoiselle_ Piper,” Curie interject, “I shall look after _monsieur_ Sam.”  
  
“I’ll hold you to that Curie.” Piper said switching her gaze between us several times.  
  
***  
  
The next morning I was about ready to head out, having put on my freshly repainted armour, which I had learned went by the generic name of CPL MKII Combat Armour. Not that anyone I’d spoken to actually knew what the CPL stood for. Not that it really mattered, since I doubted I could find where it had been made anyway.  
  
I’d gotten rid of the dull green with white skulls that the last user had been fond of and used two tins of spray paint, that was forty caps I wasn’t seeing again, to paint it black and gray in various patterns, doing my best to emulate an urban camouflage scheme since I figured I’d be spending most of my time in the Boston area rather than the bush. Not that Americans really had a bush, at most they had a woods which was completely different, even if it was a radioactive hell-beast infested woods.  
  
The armour plates were made from polymers and ceramics that slotted neatly into wearable combat webbing giving me a nice safe feeling. Unfortunately it wasn’t total protection, just the chest, arms, and legs, with some inconvenient gaps in places. I’d really like to get myself a set of power armour but that was way out of my budget even if I could find someone selling some.  
  
The paint job I gave my armour set wasn’t perfect, but then again it didn’t need to be, it just needed to break up my shape and help me blend in with the background. Nat even painted me a nice little [Eureka Flag](http://i.imgur.com/0aC7s1a.png) on the left bicep, she was pretty good at the fine detail work, much better than I was.  
  
Sure the flag had _some_ negative connotations given that racists and outright fascists had used it in the past during protests, but to me it represented the Australian spirit, defiance in the face of overwhelming odds, unity in a common wish for a just and fair world, and all that jazz. Okay so mostly I just liked the look of it. Don’t judge me.  
  
Personally I figured if we _had_ to change the Australian flag and we couldn’t work out someway around the whole copyright mess that was the ‘Event Horizon’ variation, where the Aboriginal flag took the place of the Union Flag on the current version, we should have went with the modified Eureka Flag, the one with the Aboriginal colours, black background, red bars, and gold stars. It would be a nice compromise.  
  
Anyway the armour would give me considerable protection, I just wished I had something better than the WWII style helmet to top it off. Head protection was important damnit! Still it would do the job for now.  
  
Another thing I’d spent money on was a _proper_ combat web to replace the half-assed wire one I’d been using before getting to Diamond City, so now my magazines, knife, pistol, and various knickknacks were stored neatly and within easy reach. I’d also gotten a sling for Baby as part of my minor refit for the girl.  
  
Said refit had included reworking a few of the parts to function more smoothly, replacing the barrel to up the accuracy, and installing a simple 1.5x telescopic sight similar to those found on the [ Steyr AUG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steyr_AUG) to replace the iron sights. It wasn’t perfect, but a bit of fiddling and some carving so it had a backup on the top of the sight itself meant that my accuracy was improved considerably.  
  
I still wished I had more caps so I could build an entirely new weapon, but that was part of the reason I was going Ghoul hunting. I had considered putting a bayonet lug on Baby, but honestly she wasn’t really sturdy enough for it, so that would have to wait for the next model. I had so many ideas floating around in my head, including ones for a low-light scope, if I could figure out a way to handle the radium without rotting my face off like those poor women who painted wrist watches back in the old days.  
  
“You ready to go Curie?” I asked, grimly amused at my thoughts of women who died from radiation poisoning as I was about to head out to kill radiation zombies alongside a robot named for one of the pioneers in research on radioactivity. That was a lot of radiation.  
  
“ _Oui monsieur_ Sam.” Curie said cheerfully as she drifted just behind me in Piper’s house, Nat was already off at school and Piper had already been gone when I woke up, likely off snooping into something.  
  
The robot looked in much better condition since she had convinced Nat to polish her shell, making her white casing gleam like new. Not that I was immune to her pleading, since I had been providing blood samples every second day and had done some work on her weapons. I was such a sucker for a sexy voice.  
  
She was also one deadly robo-lady ever since I tweaked the rather clumsy laser pistol into something more powerful and sharpened the blades on her handy dandy buzzsaw. It says something about a country where even the robots intended to be _lab assistants_ come with built-in weapons, I’m not sure what it is, but I doubt it’s complementary.  
  
It hadn’t even been that hard to upgrade her fire power, or expensive, just fifty caps worth of parts and the civilian weapon package had twice the fire rate, half again the power per shot, and no increase in power draw. It was really amazing what you could do by adding a better focusing crystal and rewiring a few capacitors.  
  
“Let’s do this then.” I said, rolling my neck and picking up Baby.  
  
***  
  
“It really is marvelous how nature is reclaiming this city.” Curie said softly, she’d finally worked out that I was serious when I told her to keep her voice down because I didn’t want someone to hear us from half a kilometer away and come to eat us.  
  
Our destination wasn’t far ahead of us, we’d been walking for two hours and I honestly wondered why Diamond City Security hadn’t just dealt with the issue themselves since the ghouls were so close, but I figured McDick was leaving them alone for reasons arcane and political.  
  
“Marvelous isn’t the word I’d use.” I replied as I kept my eyes peeled for any threats as we walked along the battered road. I’d always been one of those people who found the ‘After People’ style documentaries to be incredibly sad. The idea that everything humanity had built, good and bad, would fade away without anyone to mourn its passing was crushing.  
  
“Oh but _monsieur_ Sam, look at how even simple grass has adapted to the change in its environment!” Curie said in excitement, one of her arms waving around, “Professor Scara and I were studying a strain that evolved from the type they used on the playing field before the war. It has adapted to need much less moisture than the progenitor strain. Who knows what it will become in another two hundred years!”  
  
“Huh.” I said, “I guess when you put it that way it _is_ pretty cool.” I said distractedly, over the last two weeks I’d given up on getting her to call me Sam, it seemed it was part of her programming to use the titles with everyone she met. I guess her mad scientist boss was a bit of a francophile.  
  
“Oh yes, the grass handles the cold temperatures of the region very well.” Curie cheerfully agreed.  
  
“I meant cool in the vernacular,” I said with a smile, “as in interesting and impressive, not the temperature.”  
  
“Ahh.” Curie replied, “That makes your statement more sensible in retrospect. Thank you for explaining.”  
  
“You’re welcome.” I said with a chuckle before pausing slightly, “You know that actually reminds me, I’ve been really surprised at the linguistic drift, or rather the _lack_ of it, here in the Commonwealth. It’s been two hundred years without any mass media to keep English static and yet hardly anything has changed.”  
  
“I had not thought of that _monsieur_ Sam.” Curie said thoughtfully, “Apart from your accent and the occasional foreign idiom you sound very much like the local inhabitants. My programming focused on the biological sciences but there is some information about the social...”  
  
Whatever Curie was going to say I didn’t get a chance to find out as one second I was walking along the road and the next a zombie fell out of a freaking _window_ not half a meter in front of me, landing on the sidewalk in a groaning heap.  
  
I freaked, it stank and looked like it had been dead for a good decade or more to the point I couldn’t even tell the gender the ghoul had originally been. A second later it was dead as I thumbed the safety off Baby and put three of my new purpose-made hollowpoint slugs into its chest. Blood and viscera splattered everywhere, hitting both Curie and myself.  
  
“Well that was bracing.” I said sarcastically as I wiped the blood off my face with a bit of rag. I really should have been wearing my balaclava but the damn thing was itchy as hell and I was travelling light, just Baby, my knife, my pistol, my armour, and a small pack filled with some water, spare ammo, and a day's worth of food and other bits of useful gear.  
  
"Why is everything so dangerous up here?" Curie asked as blood dripped down her now formally-gleaming white shell.  
  
“Fucked if I know lady.” I replied with a grim smile as I noted movement ahead, it seemed our noise had drawn the attention of the lovely rad-zombies that we were hunting. Oh well at least I won't have to go cave diving to get them out. “Come-on if you think you're hard enough!” I yelled out, better the ghouls come to us them the other way around.  
  
“I do not think this is wise _monsieur_ Sam.” Curie said even as her metal tendrils moved to bring up her buzzsaw and laser attachments.  
  
“No, but it beats the shit out of sitting around feeling depressed.” I replied as I dropped the closest zombie with a single shot to the head. I really was proud of how well Baby was coming along, fifty meters wasn’t much but it was better than she had been.  
  
“ _Oui_ , though dangerous, combat is quite vigorous exercise.” Curie said cheerfully as she riddled one of the ghouls full of little holes with her laser, the stink of burning flesh was revolting as ever and I was glad that I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast or I might be making even more of a mess of my armour.  
  
There was a pack of five ghouls moving a lot quicker than the others coming towards us. I smiled as I let go of Baby, letting the sling catch her weight, and reached inside one of the pockets on my combat webbing for another of the little surprises that had cost far more to build than it should've.  
  
It was an old dog food can filled with nails and gunpowder wrapped in duct tape with an improvised fuse. I tapped the top of my IED cracking the glass housing of the fuse and threw the little bundle of death underhanded at the approaching mini-horde. It landed at the feet of the first ghoul just as I covered my ears with my hands and turned away, squeezing my eyes closed.  
  
As far as explosions went it wasn’t much, I’d set off bigger booms back on the farm, but then again I hadn’t added shrapnel to any of those booms since I wasn’t insane. This one however practically shredded the five ghouls, blowing apart the two closest and fucking up the other three.  
  
Curie promptly put them down with pin-point laser shots to the head. Merciful of her, then again one of the things my grandfather had always said was don’t be cruel if you don’t have to be, and frankly the poor things had suffered enough at this point.  
  
It was just a pity that I only had a single grenade on me, because that had been _fun_. Still I wasn’t really keen on carrying around explosives that I made myself even if I was ninety-nine percent sure they were stable. That last one percent was a real bitch.  
  
With my ears ringing I snatched up Baby and blew apart another ghoul that was getting far too close for comfort. Really I must have killed almost a dozen of the blighters, where were they coming from?  
  
Ahh there it is. They were coming up from a makeshift staircase consisting of a ruined car and some boards that linked the overpass with the streets above. Another few were crawling out of broken windows on the buildings that lined the street we were fighting on.  
  
Honestly it was kind of boring, no real challenge at all. I dropped another two ghouls, and then there was silence in the area. It was done. That was the easiest money I’d ever made, I have zero clue why no-one else had done it sooner.  
  
I really shouldn’t have tempted Murphy because the second I thought that I noticed a soft light at the edge of my eye near the makeshift ladder and my stomach sunk into my guts.  
  
“Glowing one!” I yelled, already backpedaling and firing, the geiger counter on my pip-boy started to go _nuts_ , I got off two shots before Baby clicked dry. I hadn’t been paying attention to my ammo loadout, I’d already used my grenade, and my sloppiness had bitten me on the backside, hard.  
  
“Do not worry _monsieur_ Sam, I shall deal with _le malfaiteur_!” Curie announced in dramatic fashion, firing her laser at the Glowing One in a series of rapid shots that left after-images on my vision.  
  
I swore as I switched out my magazine, her shots did _shit_ against the iridescent ghoul. It rushed towards us, my geiger counter ominously clicking faster and faster, in a standard run, not at all bothered by the high energy weapons fire.  
  
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I chanted as the Glowing One paused in the middle of the pile of ghouls and spread his arms out wide like a fucking showman. I just managed to get the magazine to click into place as there was an intense burst of light that blinded me for a moment and then the ghouls that I had just killed, well the ones that were still in one peice more or less started to move again.  
  
“ _Il est impossible_!” Curie cried out, her buzzsaw spinning and cutting into one of the ghouls crawling towards us as her laser shot another one.  
  
“No shit!” I yelled as I dropped to a knee and sharted blowing apart ghouls, taking out three of the resurrected ones closest to us before turning my attention on the Glowing One. One shot hit the torso, spinning him around like a top and causing the second and third to miss. I swore again before aiming for the legs, blowing the right one off at the knee.  
  
The fucker was _still_ alive though and still coming towards us, pulling himself along the ground with his hands, his face bent back in a feral snear. I removed the expression for him with two heavy grain slugs moving at supersonic velocity. The Glowing One’s body twitched as he died and then the rest of the ghouls that he had animated slumped to the ground like puppets with their strings cut.  
  
What I wanted to know was since when did Glowing Ones start taking points in fucking _necromancer_?  
  
“Oh dear _monsieur_ Sam, you are presenting symptoms of acute radiation sickness. This must be addressed at once.” Curie said worriedly.  
  
“Yeah, let's get right on that.” I replied as I finally lost my fight with my stomache and vomited all over myself. Oh shit was that blood?  
  
***  
  
By the time we got back to Diamond City my dose of RadAway had mostly cleaned up my little case of radiation poisoning. Well I assumed so at least because I’d stopped coughing up blood and my hair wasn’t falling out anymore. Definitely going to be needing that balaclava now, because I was missing most of my wonderful brown locks. I’ll say this for the unethical fuckers in this universe, when they develop medication it _works_.  
  
I still felt like shit and my mouth tasted like chalk but according to both my Pip-boy and Curie I should be fine in the morning. I was just grateful that Curie hadn’t been damaged, otherwise there would have been no-one to drag my useless backside back to town, or cut the ears off the dead ghouls so we could get paid.  
  
On the plus side I didn’t need to do it myself! On the downside they had fuck all worth looting, just a few caps, a lighter, and a bunch of rotten clothing between the whole pack. Speaking of the downside I was experiencing another part of it right at that moment.  
  
“What do you mean there is a week’s wait for the payment?” I asked incredulously as I looked at blonde bimbo that Mayor McDickface kept around as his ‘secretary’.  
  
“I was perfectly clear.” Geneva said with a sneer as I leaned on her desk, she wasn’t at all intimidated by my looming presence, I guess the two guards in the room helped there. “You will need to wait until the next Security patrol of the area to determine the work has been done correctly.”  
  
“I’ve got the ears right here!” I snapped as I slammed the sack containing the ghoul ears down on the desk.  
  
“You could've gotten them anywhere.” Geneva said as one of the guards put his hand on his pistol, “If you want the bounty you need to wait.”  
  
“This is such bullshit!” I said as I turned and stormed out of the office towards the lift that would take me down to the ground. Fucking Mayor. I should have just capped him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Sam’s ‘rescuing’ of Piper didn’t come without consequences which pushed him into some dodgy choices. He’s not really in a healthy place mentally. I hope you like McDonough’s subtle punishment, shows he’s not letting go of his plans for his enemies even if he is temporarily stymied.  
> Corrections on the French used would be welcome. It’s been over twenty five years since I took it in school and Google Translate isn’t perfect. If anyone could recommend a decent phrase book available electronically for cheap I wouldn’t be averse either.  
> Thanks to @Mizu for his work :)


	16. A Chance Meeting

“There, two late model RobCo circuit boards, three sensor modules, and an even dozen thermal fuses.” I said plunking my cargo down on the table in the ‘lounge’ area of the Dugout Inn, “Now where are my caps?”  
  
“I asked for five circuit boards and six sensor modules.” My client, Jimmy Franks, replied with a frown, “No way I’m paying for an incomplete shipment.”  
  
“Don’t piss on my shoulder and tell me it's raining!” I snapped incoherently, I was getting really sick to death of people stiffing me, my handing dropping to my pistol. Maybe shooting a bitch would send a message to the rest. He had sent me to a fucking shithole to gather that crap and it was all I could bloody find.  
  
“ _Monsieur_ Sam,” Curie said from behind me, “I think our friend was suggesting that he wouldn’t be paying _full_ price, not that he intended to take the goods without payment.”  
  
“That right mate?” I asked with clenched teeth as Jimmy glanced between my pissed off visage and my pistol, which wouldn’t be in the holster much longer if he didn’t answer correctly. It had taken me a full day to gather that crap and I’d had to kill a dozen mole-rats, I fucking _hate_ mole-rats.  
  
“Of course, of course.” He said quickly. “How about seventy five percent?”  
  
“That works.” I said after a moment’s thought, I wanted to hold out for a better chunk, but Jimmy worked for Malcom Latimer and I didn’t want to piss off one of the richest men in Diamond City. Especially not when you consider the rumours about his affiliation with some of the more dodgy people around.  
  
It had been a fortnight since I’d killed the ghouls at the overpass and in that time I’d picked up a few odd jobs involving killing things and gathering supplies for various people who were willing to risk the Mayor’s disfavour for a reliable man who was good with a weapon.  
  
It took ten days for the money from the ghoul bounty to come in and I think I only got it because it hadn’t been Diamond City that placed it, but a third party out of Bunker Hill using the Mayor’s office as an intermediary.  
  
My ‘client’ counted out one hundred and eighty caps and handed me a pouch containing the currency before taking the electronics and scurrying off. Another thing the games didn’t deal with was how annoying caps were when you started dealing with large sums of money. I really wished someone would come up with _denominations_.  
  
I took twenty caps out of the pouch and handed it over to Curie who stashed it in the webbing I’d made for her shell.  
  
“Do not stay out too late _monsieur_ Sam,” Curie chided, “you promised to help _mademoiselle_ Nat with her homework.”  
  
“Just a couple of drinks.” I promised with a smile as she floated away with a wave. Honestly Curie treated me like I was a toddler sometimes but she was really handy to have around and despite my... feelings on robots I had grown to like her as a person.  
  
“What did I tell you about killing people in my bar?” Vadim asked in a faux stern tone as I ambled up to the bar.  
  
“Make sure I do it on the concrete because it's easier to clean than the rugs?” I quipped in reply as I took a seat at the bar. Vadim laughed uproariously as he poured me a glass of his best rotgut, which was still pretty bloody awful.  
  
“I like you Sam.” Vadim said chuckling and shaking his head, acting every bit the stereotypical Russian hardman, and the stereotypical barmen as he got a rag out and started cleaning a glass.  
  
“My heart melts at the affection.” I said with a smirk before taking a deep gulp of the drink. “Even if your booze tastes like watered down horse piss.”  
  
“I miss horses.” Yefim Bobrov said as he ambled up beside his brother who was protesting about the purity of his drink and the bad taste of Australians using insults that had been old in my _grandfather’s_ day, “I haven’t seen any since we got to this country.”  
  
“Tell me about it.” I grumbled, “I’d kill for a good Arabian, hell I’d even take a Shetland Pony.” That was one thing that always struck me about the games, the lack of equines in general, but I figured it was something to do with game balance and not wanting to give the player transport, I never figured they’d all died out but it seemed they had.  
  
It really was a pity, and not just because having a horse would make my life easier, a mule would do the same thing and they were gone as well. No, it was simply because I actually _liked_ horses, I’d grown up around them, and sure they could be surly bastards who were nowhere near as smart as most people thought, but if you knew how to work them they made great companions.  
  
“Bah, you’d kill for a lot of things Sammy.” Vadim joked back.  
  
“You’re neither my mother nor my girlfriend Vadim so it's Sam or Samuel if you really must to you, never Sammy.” I said eyeing the Russian with blood in my name. I _loathed_ being called Sammy, it was infantile and _not_ my name.  
  
The younger Bobrov brother just laughed, he really didn’t give a fuck about anything. Then again the pair of them had managed to make it from _Russia_ to _Boston_ , so they were tough sons of bitches.  
  
“I miss Ilya, she was a nice old Vyatka.” Yefim said nostalgically, “Carried us a long way.”  
  
“She was a mean old nag who tried to drown you! Twice!” Vadim interjected, his voice booming across the bar.  
  
I shook my head fondly as the two Russian brothers started arguing in their native language, content to watch the show and drink my booze. I had a long day ahead of me tomorrow, a trip up to Goodneighbor to deliver a shipment of ‘medical supplies’ for Solomon from Chem-I-Care.  
  
This is what my life had become, bounty hunter, mercenary, and drug mule. If my mother could only see me now.  
  
***  
  
An hour later I staggered into Piper’s house, I wasn’t _that_ drunk, but damn did the booze at the Dugout Inn pack a kick. Doubly so on an empty stomach.  
  
“Hey guys.” I slurred cheerfully as I spotted Piper and Nat sitting at what passed for the kitchen table, paper and a textbook spread out in front of them, the smell of food wafting from a covered plate sitting near the stove.  
  
“Oh Blue, thank god.” Piper said quickly hopping up and dropping the textbook she’d been staring at with a puzzled expression like it was on fire, “Here, you help Nat with her homework, I’ll get your dinner.”  
  
“Thanks Angel.” I said with a laugh, normally she’d tell me to get it myself and that she wasn’t my mother, but she _really_ hated math. I couldn’t say I was fond of it myself, or even that good at any that didn’t involve programming, but I was much better it at than her. Still she was a good sister and determined that Nat would get more of an education than she had.  
  
Piper was a pretty decent writer, better than me if I was telling the truth, which was amazing considering she was mostly self-taught; She’d only learnt the basics from her parents and everything else from old books. Sometimes I wondered if she could have been the next Bronte, Wolf, or Shelly if she had been born in a world with a better education system. She had the raw talent and imagination for it that was for sure.  
  
“So what are we working on tonight?” I asked as I slumped into the recently vacated chair, wincing as it creaked under my bulk. Compared to most of the people around Diamond City I was damn near a giant, good nutrition during childhood was important, and even during the lean times there was always food on our table.  
  
“It smells like you’ve been working your way through Vadim’s private stash already.” Nat said wrinkling up her nose and demonstrating that she had her sister’s cutting tongue.  
  
“Just a little.” I said with a sloppy smile leaning towards her and breathing directly into her face.  
  
“Eww! Piper! Sam’s being gross again!” Nat yelled as she made a disgusted face and leaned back from me, waving her hands frantically to ward off the smell of my breath. She reminded me of my nieces and in a good way.   
  
“Sam, stop being gross. Nat stop yelling.” Piper said with mock reproach as she put a warm plate of boiled vegetables in front of me.  
  
“Thanks Angel.” I said with a smile, plucking up a small tato with my fingers and tossing it in my mouth, “Where’s Curie? Did she give you the caps?” I asked when I finished chewing.  
  
“She’s on the charging station you rigged up for her.” Piper said with a nod, taking a seat at the table, sitting backwards on the chair and leaning on the rest, “And you know you don’t need to give me so much money.”  
  
“Err, consider it rent.” I said with a shrug as I snagged a little cabbage-like thing and popped it into my mouth. I’d instructed Curie to give Piper half of the caps I’d earned today, leaving me with just over eighty caps left from the job. Combined with my other pay I was up to almost five hundred after expenses and previous payments to Piper, which she complained about then as well.  
  
“You already paid me twice this week.” Piper said with an adorably cross expression, “If that’s rent you’re paid up until the end of the year!”  
  
“Err.” I said eloquently with a shrug before turning to Nat’s textbook, “So what have we got tonight kidlet? Ohhh more division, this should be fun.”  
  
Piper just sighed as Nat started to explain her homework.  
  
***  
  
The next morning I was really regretting the few drinks I had as I slipped my sunglasses on. Bloody headache. I really should keep away from the crap Vadim calls Vodka and stick to his beer, either that or eat before I drink. Or stop drinking entirely, but that wasn't happening, getting sloshed was one of the only things I could do to keep sane in this stupid world.  
  
“Good morning _monsieur_ Sam.” Curie said as she floated down from the top of Piper’s shack slash house, that’s where I set up her recharging station behind the Publick Occurrences sign under a makeshift room. Technically as a Miss Nanny, as I learned her model was called, she could go for a long time without charging but doing it regularly reduced the maintenance needs.  
  
“Mornin’ Doc.” I replied, over the last month we’d became fairly good friends and I’d tagged her with her own nickname, if only to retain my sanity from all the French she spouted. “Ready to head off?”  
  
I was only asking to be polite, I could tell from a glance that she was, the harness we’d made was already stuffed with the cargo we were taking to Goodneighbor, mostly chems and medications.  
  
“ _Oui_ ,” Curie said cheerfully as she drifted to a stop just beside me, “Oh I almost forgot, _monsieur_ Nick let this with me yesterday.” She waved one of her arms at me, the one with the grabbing claw not the buzzsaw or pistol, and presented a note.  
  
“Thanks.” I said in puzzlement as I unfolded the bit of paper and struggled to read Nick’s chicken scratch. The man had the handwriting to be a doctor, but from what I could gather he was going to be out of town for a few days on a case and that when he got back he might have some information on the person I asked him to look into.  
  
The person in question being Ronnie Shaw, the one I’d been begged by a dying man to help. Apparently she was known to be in the area of the Slog which was the direction Nick was headed for his case, he didn’t go into details, and he hoped to find her for me.  
  
With a shrug I slipped the note inside one of the pouches on my belt. It could keep, but for now I had a job to do, caps to earn, and hopefully something to kill.  
  
***  
  
The trip to Goodneighbor was mostly uneventful apart from Curie wanting to stop every ten feet and look at some tourist trap and a lone ghoul shambling along near a bookshop that got a silenced 10mm round in the back of his neck putting him out of his misery.  
  
“Hi Sam.” One of the guards said as I walked through the main gates.  
  
“Hey Carl, how’s the wife?” I replied with a wave of my left hand, my right holding out a few caps, the standard bribe for traders wanting protection. It was refreshingly honest. They didn’t try and dress it up as a service fee or a tax, it was a bribe plain and simple.   
  
“Still a blood-sucking harpy.” The ghoul in the fade suit with a tommy gun quipped back as he shook my hand and pocketed the caps. “You have a good day now.” He added with a tip of his hat.  
  
“Later mate.” I said with a smile and a nod. It was nice to be around people who didn’t avoid eye contact for fear of security. Oh Carl would happily slip a knife into my ribs and take everything I owned if I didn’t pay him, but he wasn’t a dick about it.  
  
If it wasn’t for Piper and Nat I’d have moved my ass to Goodneighbor weeks ago, it wasn’t as clean as Diamond City and you needed to watch your wallet at all times, but at least it was freaking _honest_. But that wouldn’t be happening, Piper wanted her sister to have an education and that meant Diamond City, plus moving would be letting McDickface win and that was never happening. So she was sticking around and that meant I was sticking around.  
  
Curie and I made our way through the market, waving and nodding to a few people I gotten to know during my trips here, and headed towards the old State House where the ‘Mayor’ of Goodneighbor had set up shop.  
  
The first time I’d brought chems up here for Solomon I’d been a bit stymied, it was like exporting cocaine to _Colombia_ wasn’t it? But it turned out that Hancock, that was the Mayor, prefered a higher grade of product than what was commonly made in his domain, and that meant Chem-I-Care.  
  
Thankfully I didn’t have to deal with the chem-addled ghoul this time around, the guy gave me the creeps, just his bodyguard, who wasn’t much better. Fahrenheit was one scary women, but at least the looks she gave me suggested she was plotting murder rather than seduction. I got the reciept to take back to Solomon to confirm the delivery  
and my pay for the job.  
  
It wasn’t a lot, just sixty caps, but it was decent enough and I wanted to do some shopping while I was here anyway and well it was easy money for a few hours work. Most people considered the trip a bit dangerous, and to tell the truth it was, but if you were smart and heavily armed you could make it without much issue.  
  
Once I’d have never taken a job like it, back before all this shit, hell even before we got to Diamond City I wouldn’t have taken it, but maybe what they say about experience deadening you to the reality of violence was true.  
  
“G’day Sam!”  
  
“Jesus Daisy, your accent keeps getting worse!” I said as a voice broke me out of my thoughts. I’d walked on auto-pilot towards the ghoul’s store, we were friends after a fashion, even if she had an annoying habit of pestering me for details about Australia and had some really strange notions about what it was like pre-war.  
  
“You say such mean things sugar.” Daisy said holding her hand over her heart in mock shock. “Why do I put up with you again?”  
  
“Treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen Doll.” I said with a laugh, “Any news?”  
  
“Word is the Gunners ran into some trouble over at the Mass Fusion building, a bunch of them got killed by some Synths.” Daisy said with a feral smile. She wasn’t of a fan of the ‘premier mercenary outfit of the Commonwealth’ anymore than Nick was. It was a common refrain really.  
  
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of thugs.” I agreed with a matching smile. “Any idea why though? They piss off the Institute or were they just in the way?”  
  
“Who knows with the Institute?” Daisy said with a shrug. “Crazy fuckers do what they please and the rest of us just hope we can get out of their way before some robot turns us into roadkill.”  
  
“There’s a lot of truth in that.” I said with a sad nod. Fucking Institute, if they weren’t kidnapping babies and killing people in cryo-sleep, then they were pulling shit like this. It was enough to make a man wish for a nuke in their base and button in my hand.  
  
“So what can I do you for today?” Daisy asked, getting to business.  
  
***  
  
A few hours later I was sitting in the bar of the Third Rail, listening to Magnolia sing. Woman was pretty damn good, not to mention hot as hell. The booze here was actually better than the crap they served at the Dugout Inn but it was nowhere near as clean, which was saying something considering the Russian brother’s idea of hygiene.  
  
Curie was off in the room I’d rented at the local hotel with most of our gear, she’d picked up some old science book at Daisy’s and was eager to start reading it, leaving me with just my armour, my pistol and a few caps to pay for my booze. I mean I liked Goodneighbor but I didn't like it enough to go around unarmed or looking flush. That was begging for a shanking.  
  
“Looking for a good time sweetheart?” A woman in a low cut dress that had seen better days asked as she took a seat next to me at the bar.  
  
You got all types in the Third Rail, the old subway station retrofitted into a bar, from traders making a stop and farmers getting supplies to hardened mercs and criminals, along with people ready to cater to them. As ever the dollar, or perhaps I should say cap, was almighty.  
  
“No thanks.” I replied, shaking my head. She was _far_ too young, maybe nineteen in my old world which meant sixteen tops here, and honestly I never had much interest in casual sex. Plus I didn’t even want to think about the kinds of STDs this world had.  
  
The young woman muttered something uncomplimentary about my sexuality as she slipped off the stool and headed into the lounge area looking for easier pickings. I felt bad for her, since I doubted she was in the world's oldest profession by choice, and maybe a few weeks ago I might have done something to help her, even if it had just been slipping her a few caps, but now I was just numb to the suffering around me and was focused on making sure me and mine were taken care of.  
  
And ensuring I had enough money so that I could get shitfaced regularly so I wouldn’t think so much about this fucked up world and my place in it.  
  
I was on my third, and last, drink of the night when I felt a heavy hand drop on my shoulder. I turned on my stool, the old metal creaking loudly, and looked up at a battered old ghoul with a cap on his head. He was wearing armour like mine, only his was painted green and in the best condition I’d seen of any in the Commonwealth since I woke up.  
  
“Can I help you?” I asked, putting my glass on the bar and my hand drifting down to my pistol.  
  
“Depends.” The ghoul rumbled, “You Sam Parker?”  
  
“Depends.” I echoed, “Who’s asking?”  
  
“Edward Deegan.” He replied, nodding to the robot bartender and holding up two fingers while taking the empty stool next to me, “You’ve been making a bit of a name for yourself, dependable, efficient, that kind of stuff.”  
  
“What’s it to you?” I asked, as I picked up my glass again now that it didn’t look like we were going to be getting into a fight, “You with the Gunners or something? Here to warn me off your turf?”  
  
He looked the part and it was something both Piper and I were concerned about. The Gunner’s weren’t fond of competition, either consuming smaller outfits or eliminating them outright.  
  
“No.” Edward said with a snort, “Not that those jumped up thugs would bother with someone as small time as you.”  
  
“Then what do _you_ want with a small timer like me?” I asked before taking a sip of my drink and wincing, I must be sobering up because it tasted worse than normal, more like paint stripper than it had a few minutes ago.  
  
“I want to offer you a job.” Edward said, pausing as Whitechapel Charlie, the robot bartender, dropped off a glass of amber fluid in front of him. The ghoul took a big drink before continuing, “My employers and I are always on the lookout for up and coming talent.”  
  
“And I qualify?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. Slightly amused at the smoke this guy was blowing up my backside. Sure I could do a few things but I was hardly a heavy hitter or even that well known. I wondered how he’d come to hear of it.  
  
“Like I said, so far you’ve been dependable and efficient from what I’ve heard.” Edward said with a shrug, “You’d be amazed how rare that is around here, and it's something we appreciate a great deal.”  
  
“Huh.” I grunted. Yeah I could see that. It made sense since most of the people around here willing to do the sort of work I did were either psychotic, drug addicted, incredibly desperate amateurs, or all of the above.  
  
“So you interested?” Edward asked, polishing off the last of his drink and waving Charlie for another one.  
  
“Depends.” I said with a shrug, “What kind of work and payment are you offering? I do have some lines I won't cross, so don’t expect me to go killing civilians or raiding settlements or any of that sort of shit.”  
  
“You’ll be amply compensated.” Edward assured me, “As for the work itself, most of it would be like your job today, deliveries where speed and discretion is vital. Occasionally we might ask you to branch out a little bit.”  
  
I nodded thoughtfully. This guy knew a lot of shit he probably shouldn’t, but a steady gig would be convenient. Depending on the frequency of the work it would let me focus a lot on my own projects during my off time and not have to worry about looking for the next job.  
  
Still I had to wonder just who had shopped me to him, and what other info the grass was selling. In my experience the old expression about snitches getting stitches was the _best_ case scenario. In this case it would be a 10mm round right between the eyes if I found out his or her name.  
  
“Well I’m interested, but you’ll need to pony up a few more details before I agree to anything.” I said finally.  
  
“Dependable, efficient, and _cautious._ ” Edward said approvingly as he got up, “Just the sort of person we’re looking for, come on, we’ll get a table and talk, next round’s on me.”  
  
I just shrugged and stood to follow him, making sure to bring my glass. Waste not want not and all that jazz.  
  
***  
  
By the time I made it back to the hotel room I was sharing with Curie I was totally rat arsed, Edward just kept buying booze and since I had been raised with manners it would be rude not to drink it. At least that was my excuse and I was sticking with it.  
  
“ _Monsieur_ Sam, we really must speak about moderating your alcohol intake.” Curie said disapprovingly as I flopped face first, armour and all, onto the mattress, “Excessive consumption can lead to all kinds of medical issues.”  
  
I shot her a vaguely obscene gesture without moving my face off the pillow. In return I got a gasp and some muttering in French. At that point I was really glad I’d forgotten most of my primary school lessons in the language because I’m pretty sure none of what she was saying was complimentary.  
  
Hmmm... Sleepy... I’d apologize in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Sam spends a lot of time in bars... :p Not a ton of action this chapter but a fair bit of set up so we can step into the third arc of the story, the first was him waking up, the second was meeting Nick and Piper, and now we get to branch out a bit more. This is going to be so much fun! Well not for Sam >:)  
> As always thanks to Mizu for his help.


	17. Feeding the Ducks

  
I’m not sure if it is a good thing that I’m getting used to waking up hungover or not. I mean on one hand it means I spend less time feeling like shit, on the other it doesn’t say anything good about my drinking habits.  
  
Either way Curie wasn’t very happy with me and was intent on letting me known in the most Curie way possible, a lecture on the deleterious effects of ethanol on the human body peppered with lots of French.  
  
On the plus side she had aspirin for me. Sure I could have taken a stim-pack, but they were expensive as hell and something to be saved for real emergencies whereas aspirin was easy to make and thus cheap. You could pick up a bottle of twenty for five caps. Of course with my paranoia and Curie’s curiosity it was more like eighteen a bottle, since she took two at random out of each purchase to test.  
  
“Look, I said I’m sorry about how I acted.” I said, holding my head in my hands as I sat cross legged on the dirty mattress, “I was celebrating getting us a new job.”  
  
Curie went silent, never a good sign, her arms crossing over her floating spherical torso in a very good impression of annoyance. She was starting to pick up more and more ‘human’ body language. Some days I honestly wonder just how much of a sophont she was.  
  
“The new boss was buying, I couldn’t leave before he did.” I defended myself feebly, even to myself that excuse sounded hollow, “It wouldn’t be polite.”  
  
“Harumph.” Curi said, actually articulating the sound, it was funny as hell, but I didn’t laugh, partly because of my head, but mostly because it would make her sad and I didn’t want that. “And just what is this new job you took without even consulting me or _mademoiselle_ Piper as you promised?”  
  
“Just some delivery work,” I said with a shrug that made me wince from the pain, “with a side order of recovery now and then. Our first gig is the recovery sort, think of it as an audition, but it pays well.”  
  
Boy did it ever, six hundred caps to recover one little package from downtown Boston and deliver it to a house a few klicks away? No way I was turning that down, even if I was well and truly blitzed at that point. Now all I needed to do was find a good map to this Boylston Club place and we’d be set.  
  
I mean how hard could it be really?  
  
***  
  
“Are my audio receptors malfunctioning _monsieur_ Sam or is this section of the city quieter than normal?” Curie asked as we walked, or floated in her case, along the ruined road towards our target. It hadn’t been a very long walk at all, and we’d seen nothing out of the ordinary.  
  
“It’s not you hun.” I replied with a frown, there wasn’t even any bird song and it was kind of creepy actually. There was something wrong. The city wasn’t exactly the bush when it came to noise, but it was never silent. “Let’s keep an extra eye out for any trouble.”  
  
“Unfortunately I only have the two, but I shall focus them in opposite directions just for you _monsieur_ Sam.” Curie said sweetly and I have to admit the way her eyes rotated at her words made me laugh. She was such a dork, but she was my dork and I much prefered her making bad jokes over being mad at me.  
  
“I think that’s our target.” I said jerking my chin in direction of a building on the corner. It looked to be the spot based on the map I’d gotten off Daisy, not that I’d told her where we were going, I trusted the ghoul but not that much.  
  
“Perhaps after we finish we can stop in the park for a picnic?” Curie asked, “That pond looks lovely and I’m sure the algae growing on it will make for a marvelous test sample.”  
  
“Sure.” I said with a shrug, noting that there was another sign just ahead, we’d been seeing them on and off for a bit now, pictures of what looked like a duck with an X over it surrounded by skulls. More raider sign I assumed, but of what I couldn’t tell you. Maybe Darkwing Duck had taken over the area and was terrorising the criminal element? That would be awesome.  
  
Possible too given the weird-ass biology of this universe. Curie was _still_ trying to work out how that Glowing One had reanimated the dead ghouls and hadn’t come up with a single viable theory. Personally I was going with _fucking magic brah_ , _it don’t gotta explain shit._ Not that she approved of that theory at all. So close minded.  
  
Soon enough we were at the door to the club, a rusted bronze plaque near the door proclaimed it to be the Boylston Club that we were looking forward. Shouldering Baby I gently nudged the door open and headed into the darkness, trusting Curie to provide enough light with the flashlight she had in her claw.  
  
I really needed to make myself a pair of NVGs soon, it was rather amusing as whoever or whatever downloaded the information about weapons into my head didn’t see fit to give me any designs for wearable night vision devices but _did_ include optical sights for various weapons, including NVDs, that could be repurposed to serve the same function without much effort.  
  
It was just a matter of getting the parts together, and that meant money, which this job should help with a great deal. If things panned out this might even be Baby’s last mission, poor girl, with her bigger sister coming along soon. I think I’ll call her Lola.  
  
“This is most unsanitary!” Curie exclaimed softly.  
  
“I don’t think the maid has been in this century.” I joked back just as quietly, the place was a bloody mess, dust and mold everywhere, rotted furniture littered the floor along with empty bottles and plastic food wrappers.  
  
Was that a skeleton in one of the booths that lined the wall? It was. Fuck. And it wasn’t alone, now that my eyes had adjusted I could see at least a half dozen scattered around the large parlor area and one slumped over the bar, each of them had a glass near them as well. It looked like they went out partying and based on how fleshless the bones looked that was a long time ago.  
  
I wondered just how long this package had been waiting if these people hadn’t been disturbed since the bombs dropped. I shook off my thoughts with a firm nod to myself, a little disturbed how little impact the skeletons had on me, and headed towards the stairs near the back that would take me to the basement where what I was after was located.  
  
If anything the basement was even more disgusting than the parlor, with a patch of glowing mushrooms near one wall that made my geiger counter click ominously when I got too close. Thankfully the safe was near the other end of the basement underneath a series of shelves.  
  
With Curie staying up the top to keep watch I quickly set about smashing the hinges on the safe, they’d long since rusted , making a hell of a noise as I did so, but there wasn’t anyone around to object. I could have saved some time and effort by using the plastic explosive that Edward had given me, but honestly that stuff was as rare as rocking-horse shit and if I could get the same result with a little bit of elbow grease I was going to be saving it.  
  
Ten minutes and fifty whacks later the door fall off onto the concrete floor with a loud crash leaving me to explore the innards. Right at the front was my target, a small book with a leather jacket, a monograph reading L.F.C in gold lettering on the cover, and a red ribbon place marker.  
  
I’d been told not to read the contents, but honestly did Edward expect me to obey that command? Really? I needed the money but there were limits to what I was willing to do and if the thing contained the plans to a doomsday weapon or something I wanted to know before I handed it off.  
  
The problem was I couldn’t read a thing in it. It wasn’t even written in latin script, nor any alphabet I could recognise. It looked pictographic in nature, but not Asian, Egyptian, Babylonian, or anything like that. I mean I couldn’t _read_ those languages, but anyone with even a hint of modern education could _recognise_ them easily enough. This was totally alien to anything I’d seen before.  
  
I squinted as my eyes started to hurt and I felt the beginnings of a migraine headache just behind my eyes, I knew the signs well enough. I closed the book with a sigh, it must have been the low light from my Pip-boy’s flashlight. That had to be it.  
  
I’d get Curie to look at it later, maybe she could make something out. If I was forced to guess it was likely some nutjob’s personal language, people with more brains than sense had been making those things up for centuries. Or it could have been something really obscure. I’d kill for internet access right about now. Lots of geometric shapes and weird lines, so yeah that was about right.  
  
I stuffed the book into a pouch and bent back to the safe to see what other goodies I could find. Hmm looks like someone was naughty, there was a stack of US currency in there, not worth much now, but a good chunk of change back then. Still I can dump it on Daisy for recycling, make a few caps if nothing else.  
  
Next there was a small black case containing a diamond necklace. I wonder if Piper would like it? Normally I was against diamonds on general principle, what with De Beers being a real life super-villain group, but I doubt they were around to profit from that filthy trade anymore...  
  
Shit. I just realised they were likely ruling Luxembourg with a fist of iron weren’t they? Oh well not my problem right now.  
  
After the necklace, which went into my bag, was a nice watch with a broken face that I also pocketed, the gears might come in handy. A few bits of paper that contained business dealings, like shady as fuck, that could be left behind as they were no longer relevant, and finally gold-plated zippo style lighter that I was definitely keeping for myself.  
  
All in all not a bad haul, no weapons or caps, but I hardly expected to find either in a pre-war safe in a ‘gentleman's’ club. I was just grateful that there hadn’t been any nasty porn or blackmail photos. In my experience aristos are generally sick fucks, and the ones who belong to private clubs are the worst of an already bad bunch. Of course that could be my trade unionist upbringing talking.  
  
I took another look around the basement for anything worthwhile, there was a bunch of stuff, including a hell of a lot of booze. Most of it would be spoiled unfortunately, despite what people think wine for example doesn’t _keep_ getting better with age, after a certain point it turns to vinegar if you don’t store it correctly, and no-one had been keeping an eye on the contents of this place for a good long while.  
  
Such a pity really, I bet they had some nice vintages down here. I might have to come back in the future and see if any was salvageable. Even just a few bottles would be worth a fortune to those snobs in the upper stands of Diamond City. Oh sure I’d keep some to drink myself, but most would be sold, because as much as I liked my booze I liked money better, or rather I like what money _allowed_ me to do, such as build better weapons so I could keep living.  
  
“Any trouble?” I asked Curie as I climbed up the stairs back to the ground floor of the club.  
  
“ _Non_ ,” She replied cheerfully, “did you find what you needed?”  
  
“Yep.” I said, popping the p at the end of the word as I patted my pouch, “I’ll get you to have at a look at it later, I can’t make heads or tails of it myself. It’s either in code or some really obscure language.”  
  
“Oh, that sounds like fun!” Curie said cheerfully as we walked out of the building, “I have not had a chance to use my decryption software in a long time.”  
  
“Glad to be of service.” I huffed a laugh as I slung Baby, using just my right hand to keep the barrel pointed away from us, it was a kind of sloppy way to carry her but there wasn’t any threats around so we were safe. I still wondered why the area was so quiet.  
  
There were plenty of mostly intact buildings around and a good source of water from that pond just across the way, even if it would need a lot of cleaning to be drinkable. It didn’t really make sense, but then again nothing in this world did.  
  
The place might have been pretty once, when it was properly maintained. I could just see it now, people eating on the grass, kids playing, couples taking romantic trips on those swan boats... Wait a moment, was that boat moving _against_ the wind?  
  
I frowned and paused in the street looking at it. It was definitely moving, and not with the rest of the boats, and much faster. What the hell. I was about to ask Curie about it when something happened that I never expected.  
  
The swan boat burst into the air, up and up, and kept going up until it was almost eight meters in the sky, but it really wasn’t the boat that I was gaping at. And I really was gaping, my jaw open wide as I stared in disbelief at the _massive_ creature standing in the pond.  
  
It was at least seven meters tall if it was a centimeter and made of green bulging muscles. A huge misshapen head atop shoulders wide than I am tall with arms and legs the size of literal tree trunks. I have no idea how something that large could actually exist, let alone _stand_. It shouldn’t have been possible, it was like seeing a dinosaur in the flesh. The square cube law alone should have prevented it.  
  
All thought of biological impossibilities fled my mind a moment later as that huge head, bigger than Curie’s body, turned in my direction sending water cascading downwards in massive splashes. With a tremendous roar that rattled the few remaining windows in the area the _thing_ stomped out of the pond, sending waves in every direction, dragging a fucking _boat anchor_ with it.  
  
“RUN!” I screamed, not a single thought of using my rifle entering my head, fight or flight had kicked in and selected flight right off the bat. I turned on my heel and ran like the demons of hell were chasing me, because one of them fucking _was_.  
  
I was going to fucking _kill_ Edward. Cake walk my pasty Australian buttocks.  
  
***  
  
In the end the beasty didn’t follow us that far, maybe a kilometer, stopping once we ducked down into an old subway station nearby. Fucker stomped around up there for a while though and I was worried he was going to bring the whole thing down on us.  
  
But no, he did worse, he woke up a bunch of damn ghouls. That decided I looked tasty, so there Curie and I were, hold up in an old ticket booth laying down fire as a zombie horde tried to eat my face off.  
  
“I must say _monsieur_ Sam,” Curie said as she burned down another ghoul that was getting too close, showing her surgical precision, “while you don’t always show good judgement in choosing employers you are never boring.”  
  
“Thanks. I think.” I replied as I reloaded Baby, I was down two clips and the bloody rad-zombies were _still_ coming. I mean I knew Boston was a big city back in the day, but how the hell did they have this many people who turned into ghouls during the bombs? Or was someone _breeding_ the damn things? And how would that work as I was pretty sure they were sterile, or was that super mutants? Or both? I can’t remember.  
  
“While I understand their annoyance at us waking them from their slumber, I really wish the necrotic humans would simply _go away_.” Curie finished her sentence with a frustrated yell at the zombies. There must have been twenty dead bodies littering the floor by now.  
  
“How would you feel if some thugs crashed into your pad and started breaking shit?” I quipped to Curie as I started loading down fire again.  
  
“I gave them a experimental medical cure that took me two centuries to develop.” Curie replied deadpan.  
  
“Touche.” I said with a laugh as I put three rounds in a ghoul wearing what looked like an old cocktail dress.  
  
I always felt bad killing women, even if they were zombies. Not as bad as when I put down the small ones that were almost certainly children, but still pretty shitty. I guess I really was a sexist at heart, or at least old fashioned. It wouldn’t stop me from blowing their heads off if they tried to kill me of course, I could get over guilt a lot easier than I could being dead after all.  
  
“Hey Curie,” I yelled out, “you ever think about getting a mini-gun? I figure I could hook one up just above your eyes with the ammo-feed on your back, you can shoot at anything you look at.”  
  
Hmm. Maybe I could even make a gatling-laser, save on the ammo a fair bit, add an extra reactor to up her flight speed... Maybe add some wings, a few extra arms, armour the outside of her shell. Oh how about adding a sling underneath like on a hang-glider with an extra gun on the control bar! We could fly everywhere and shoot everything in our path! It would be awesome.  
  
Yeah I might be going a bit crazy, what with the whole zombie horde trying to eat me and the giant super-mutant up top ready to treat me like a peanut.  
  
“As tempting as that sounds at this moment _monsieur_ Sam, I would rather not turn myself into a machine solely focused on killing like those brutish Assaultrons.” Curie replied primly, like the very idea was offensive to her.  
  
“Hey Kleo is cool!” I protested as I shot the jaw off another zombie.  
  
“Kleo is a pervert.” Curie said promptly, “There is something seriously wrong with her programming. You have said so yourself more than once.”  
  
“Err.” I said ambivalently, still laying down fire though the ghoul wave was slacking off a bit now thankfully, “She’s alright when you get used to her. Pays well too, even if back home she’d get in so much trouble for sexual harassment. I wonder if anyone takes her up on it? I mean it's not my kink, but it takes all sorts to make a world.”  
  
“Perhaps we should focus on the battle and not the proclivities of a deviant robot soldier and hopefully hypothetical yet equally deviant lovers?” Curie suggested with distaste, zapping one ghoul in the nads. It could have been an accident but somehow I doubted it, poor bastard.  
  
Since I didn’t want to join him in his pain I shut my mouth as Curie suggested and concentrated on killing zombies. It really was fun shooting at things that couldn’t shoot back.  
  
***  
  
We ended up staying the night in the old subway station, after we cleared it of the ghoulish horde that is, just incase our friend the giant motherfucking super-mutant up top was hanging around. Having a robot that didn’t need to sleep and could go ages without recharging really was wonderful when it came to assigning guard duty.  
  
“So did you make any progress on that book?” I asked Curie as I sipped at my coffee, we’d built a small fire near an air conditioning vent for dinner the night before, waiting for my breakfast to cook.  
  
“ _Non_.” Curie said shortly, curtly, her eye stalks twitching slightly, “I ceased all attempts at decoding it after my diagnostic systems detected errors developing in my higher cognitive processors.”  
  
“It’s a DataGlyph virus?” I asked in surprise. I thought they were the stuff of _bad_ science-fiction and terrible crime shows about unrealistically hot nerds. Oh sure DataGlyphs, sometimes called microglyphs, existed and allowed for some interesting possibilities. Basically you encoded data on a surface, similar to a barcode, but in a much more robust manner.  
  
The thing is I simply couldn’t see a way to use the system as a virus medium because any _sane_ programmer quantities input and sanitizes it before allowing it anyway near the system itself. It was just such an obvious issue that I couldn’t see Curie’s developers making that kind of mistake.  
  
“I am unfamiliar with that terminology.” Curie said after a moment, “However if you are speaking of a virus deployed via optical input I do not think so. My systems are hardened against such attacks, however I am at a loss as to how to explain the errors as they directly correlate to exposure to the text and ceased after I stopped reading it.”  
  
“Shit.” I whispered quietly, maybe it _was_ a doomsday weapon in that book, “You’re okay now right?”  
  
“ _Oui_ , my system has adapted.” Curie said, bobbing her eyestalks in a equivalent of a nod, “However I find myself... apprehensive... about attempting to decode the data again.”  
  
“I don’t blame you, and no you don’t need to look at it again.” I said shaking my head, “If I didn’t think it would bite us in the ass I’d throw the damn thing in the fire and be done with it, but we need the caps that Edward is offering for it.”  
  
“Our mysterious employer who notably failed to warn us of the danger the location presented.” Curie said, her accent getting thicker with her anger. I had to wonder if it was simulated or real. It was the eternal question when it came to AIs.  
  
“Yeah and I’m going to be... _talking_ to him about that, _enthusiastically._ ” I said with clenched teeth, the fucking ghoul might end up joining his cousins in an unmarked grave if his answers weren’t convincing enough.  
  
“Oh! Is that like the enthusiastic walks the character in the story you were telling _mademoiselle_ Nat takes?” Curie asked brightly.  
  
I winced, Piper hadn’t been fond of my choice of story for her little sister, but hey Hellsing Abridged is a classic.  
  
***  
  
Edward Deegan hit the hard concrete wall of the Third Rail’s back room with a satisfying thump, his face showing shock as I practically lifted his bulk up by the straps of his armour. He was a big man, but I was bigger and pissed off which counted for a lot.  
  
“What the fuck mate?” I snarled into his face, “Didn’t you think warning me about the giant fucking super-mutant in the pond might be a good idea?”  
  
“Swan?” Edward asked blinking at me owlishly, “This is about Swan? Everyone knows about fucking Swan! Why did you think I was paying so much?”  
  
“Err... What?” I asked, I’d expect denials and justifications, not outright confusion. I let Deegan go and took a step back. I mean I’d even left Curie in our normal hotel room while I went to the meeting because I figured if I was going to get myself a ghoul-skin rug I didn’t want her to see the skinning process.  
  
“He’s been there forever.” Edward said as he dusted himself off a bit and glared at me. “What do you think all the signs are warning people about?”  
  
Signs? Oh. Oh. Fuck. Those duck things. Those were warning signs. Now I felt like even more of a pillock.  
  
“Look, did you get the book or not?” Edward asked after looking at me like I was a singularly stupid dog who had just taken a dump on his favourite rug.  
  
“Oh. Yeah here it is.” I said as I withdrew the book from my pouch and handed it to the ghoul. Now everything made sense, why he was paying so much to retrieve the book, why he hadn’t done it himself. I felt like such an idiot. From now on I was going to ask around about my targets _before_ I took the job.  
  
Edward flicked through the book before grunting and slipping it into his own belt pouch.  
  
“Look mate, I’m sorry about the whole grabbing and shoving thing.” I said somewhat awkwardly, “In my defence I did think you’d tried to get me eaten by that thing after all.”  
  
“It’s alright.” Edward rumbled, “I should have told you about Swan myself. You are new to the area and don’t know what the locals do.”  
  
“So... I guess you’re going to give me the sack now?” I asked sheepishly.  
  
“Nope.” Edward said with a gruff laugh, “If I fired everyone who slugged me I’d never get anything done.”  
  
Well that was good I guess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So when Sam met Swan... :p Sam really needs to ask more questions about why people are paying him big money to do things doesn’t he?
> 
> As always thanks go to @Mizu for his great work and suggesting this encounter in our beta sessions.
> 
> A note for my Ao3 readers, I would appreciate some comments on what you do and don’t like, how I can improve, or just general thoughts. I get a fair bit of feedback on SB and SV but hardly anything here. 80,000 words and just comment one in fact. I won't be holding back chapters or stop posting here, that behaviour is shitty, but I would like something.


	18. Changes

  
“Do you have to do that here? We eat on that table.” Piper asked as she took a seat at the battered kitchen table that served as my impromptu workbench in our shared living space. It had been four days since my little brown-pants encounter with the super-mutant known as Swan, which Piper had found incredibly funny when she stopped yelling at me for being stupid.  
  
“It’s either that or pay Arturo to use his workshop and have everything I do reported to Security.” I replied without looking up from the control circuit I was soldering into place on the motherboard of Lola. “You’re back early, things go alright?”  
  
“Kinda.” Piper said with a heavy sigh, “I got what I wanted, but if I thought the looks I get here were bad it has nothing on some of the smaller settlements. Everywhere I go people treat me like I’m a ticking timebomb.”  
  
I made a sympathetic noise, knowing from painful experience that she _did not_ want me to offer to kill anyone. Apparently she liked solving her own problems. Madness.  
  
“So when will you be finished with your latest abomination?” Piper asked, clearly wanting to change the subject.  
  
“Lola isn’t an abomination.” I said, looking up and giving her an expression of mock hurt, “Lola is a wonderful expression of man’s desire to fuck up his fellow man. Aren't you girl?”  
  
“Lola is an inanimate object.” Piper said slowly, as if speaking to a child, a really dumb one, “A really stinky one.”  
  
“Err.” I said taking a sniff, “It’s not so bad today, the smell is almost gone.”  
  
“No, it’s really not.” Piper said shaking her head before reaching up to pinch her nose, “I’m getting a contact high just being in the same room as your toy. What possessed you to spend _three hundred caps_ on the ingredients for that gunk anyway?”  
  
“That gunk is a state of the art ceramic polymer composite that prewar scientists would sell their firstborns into slavery for the recipe for,” I said with a roll of my eyes, “and it was worth every penny.”  
  
The stuff in question really was amazing, until you heated it it was just a sort of slimy clay-like substance, but after you baked it in an oven, even a kitchen oven like I had used, it hardened into something as strong as steel at a fraction the weight. That was how I made Lola’s frame and barrel.  
  
Just another one of the skills that had been ‘downloaded’ into my brain by whoever or whatever had brought me to this world. It stunk to high heaven, both when making it and when cooking it, but damn if it didn’t work well. I don’t know if it was something that existed before the war or not, but I had access to it now and it was damn useful.  
  
The hardest part of the whole process had been making the mold, but even that hadn’t been much trouble, even if it had taken me a few attempts before I was ready to use the real stuff on it. In the end I’d decided on stealing the design of the [ FN F2000](http://imgur.com/a/yCEgQ), say what you will about the Belgians, they make one hell of an assault rifle.  
  
I was a big fan of the bullpup design, even if it wasn’t technically true in the case of a coilgun since the firing action wasn’t behind the trigger but rather in the barrel itself. Still it allowed for a lot more maneuverability in tight spaces without sacrificing range and accuracy. Powerwise Lola wasn’t that big of a step up over Baby, each shot having roughly the same stopping power, but the upgrades were myriad in every other way.  
  
Not only did the better housing allow for an improved power system, meaning I would only need to change the power pack after every one hundred shots or so, but the actual switch was much easier and could be done on the fly by popping the buttplate off the rifle and slotting a new one in.  
  
A similar upgrade went into the actual magazine holding the slugs as well, no more fiddling around with it in the middle of battle, but rather straight plug and play. The actual ammunition capacity of the magazines themselves went from twenty four to thirty two without increasing the size by a great deal as well. Mostly this was done by using the minor power boost to decrease the size of the projectiles a small amount so they fitted better.  
  
Then you got the innards of the beast, which is where I was most proud, I’d upped the number of accelerating coils from three to five and improved the barrel, meaning that Lola would be deadly accurate out to three hundred meters.  
  
Another reason I chose the FN F2000, other than it looking bloody cool, had been room for upgrades. The picatinny rail would allow easy swapping of scopes and other attachments, such as a flashlight or a NVD when I got around to making one, as well as room for an undermounted single shot rotating grenade launcher similar to the M203, again when I got around to making the thing.  
  
All in all it had cost a pretty penny, every cap that Edward paid me for the book, and another couple hundred out of my stash, but it had been well worth it. It was selective firing, single shot, three round burst, and full auto, and had one nasty punch. I’d even cannibalised Baby’s old scope for a stop-gap, as well as a lot of her more reliable internals to make Lola.  
  
I’d even made some armour piercing rounds, wrapping iron around a tungsten core, for the new girl. For the most part I’d be using my hollowpoints, but I could see the need for a few AP slugs against hardened enemies... Such as people in power armour or heavy combat robots.  
  
Now if I could just get my hands on the materials I needed to make _reliable_ explosive rounds I’d be set... My very own HEAT... Mahahahaha... Wait would that be HEAPA? High-Explosive Anti Power Armour? Err... Never mind... Either way is good... Mahahahaha.  
  
“I still say it was a waste of money.” Piper said shaking her head, drawing me out of my thoughts on Lola and the gloriousness that is high explosives, “You could have picked up a rocket launcher for less!”  
  
“Err maybe.” I said with a shrug, “But it wouldn’t be nearly be as awesome as my Lola.”  
  
“You’re such a gun nerd.” Piper said shaking her head, “What’s next? Building your own power armour?”  
  
I shrugged again and went back to soldering the last few circuits, carefully not looking at my notepad that was sitting on the table. It _technically_ wasn’t power armour as it didn’t augment my movements, more of a hardsuit similar to the armour used in the Mass Effect series, but I doubted Piper would see the difference...  
  
I just needed to find myself enough money to make more of the gel I’d used on Lola and some sort of anti-energy weapon coating... Again my thoughts were cut off, this time by the front door banging open, with Piper’s little sister coming home from her day at school.  
  
“Eww, it stinks in here.” Nat said a moment after she entered, screwing up her face in an expression of disgust and causing Piper to burst out laughing.  
  
Everyone's a critic.  
  
***  
  
“Knock knock, anyone home?” I called out as I bumped open the door to the Valentine Detective Agency, careful to keep the two coffee cups I was carrying from spilling.  
  
“Only if that’s fresh pumpkin soup I smell.” Ellie, Nick’s assistant and general office manager, replied as she appeared from behind a row of file cabinets.  
  
“Fresh from the Wellingham’s pot.” I said with a smile, handy over the cup, its contents still steaming into the cold night air. “Hey Nick, I’d have brought you one, but you know the whole not eating thing.” I added with a nod and a smile towards the Synthetic Detective.  
  
“Hello Sam.” Nick said dryly from his position at his desk, his coat on the back of his chair and his feet propped up on said desk, “You’re not trying to steal my Girl Friday away from me are you?”  
  
“If all it takes is threatening a robot into parting with some of his soup to woo her away then you _really_ aren’t paying her enough Nicky Boy.” I quipped back before putting the cups on the table and flopping down into the chair.  
  
“He doesn’t.” Ellie added with a smirk as she picked up one of the cups and took a deep breath of the steaming contents, closing her eyes in satisfaction as she took in the smooth concoction of pumpkin, spices, and bacon. It really was worth the whole lumbering up to the upper stands and dealing with the condescending pricks who called the place home.  
  
“You aren’t working here for the love of the work?” Nick asked rhetorically with a laugh before turning to face me, his legs falling off the desk and hitting the wooden floor with a thump, “So what brings you around Sammy?”  
  
“Just checking in.” I said, shoving down the instinctual indignation at the loathed nickname, I knew he was just being friendly,“I thought you might have news about Ronnie Shaw.”  
  
“As a matter of fact, I do.” Nick said, clearly wanting to enjoy his moment, he could be such a drama queen, “Now I didn’t get to speak to the woman myself, she was off doing something no-one was willing to tell a stranger about, hunting raiders or some such I assume, but I left a message that you wanted to speak to her about an issue of importance.”  
  
“I guess that’s the best I can hope for.” I said with a resigned nod, honestly I wasn’t sure why I was bothering with the whole thing. Sure I had made a promise to a dying man and I guess that still meant something to me, but really I didn’t see what I could do to restore the Minutemen.  
  
I’d finally found out just _who_ they were. A militia of sorts, or rather a militia confederation, that had been founded well over a century ago to act as a sort of peace keeping force. They’d done a good job for a long time but recently they’d fallen on hard times, losing their headquarters, and then having their remaining forces either mutiny and go raider, or just plain butchered by the less... respectable forces in the Commonwealth.  
  
I really didn’t know what one man, even if I could get in touch with this Ronnie Shaw character, like me could do about it. Make a few guns? Kill a few raiders? Yeah I could do that. What I wasn’t was some sort of leader of men. I struggled running MMO raids for the love of god!  
  
I just didn’t have the temperament, skills, or frankly patience to run things. I mean yeah I could take charge if no-one else would step up but I hated every minute of it and would much rather follow.  
  
“I’m sorry it wasn’t better news Sam.” Ellie said sympathetically, reaching over and touching my hand. “I know you were hoping she’d be able to help you.”  
  
“Careful Ellie, Piper sees you touching him like that and she’ll get jealous.” Nick said with a smirk, causing the young woman to quickly withdraw her hand like she’d been burnt. It was all an act of course, the sly smile on her face gave it away.  
  
“Not you as well.” I said rolling my eyes, “I get enough shit like that in the market and from Nat. Piper and I are just good friends.”  
  
Though I would have to admit she had a wonderful smile and those eyes... No. Bad Sam! She’s ten years younger than you and what did we say about women after That Bitch From Sydney? Never again.  
  
“Uh-huh.” Ellie said skeptically, that smile morphing into a mysterious grin, “A friend you just happen to live with and give diamond necklaces...”  
  
“Bloody hell!” I said throwing up my hands in exasperation, “It’s just a necklace, I thought it looked pretty and she might like it! I should've given it to Nat! That way I wouldn’t be dealing with this bollocks.”   
  
“Oh that would have been worse!” Ellie said with a dramatic gasp, putting her hands over her heart, “The handsome if thuggish suitor seeking the hand of the younger sister? To be cast aside like that! Poor Piper! The scandal! She’d never recover!”  
  
“You people are impossible.” I said folding my arms over my chest and settling down for a good sulk as the Detective and his secretary laughed at me. Even if they could be total pricks at times, it was good to be among friends.  
  
***  
  
“Bloody hell Paul, will you piss off and leave me alone already?” I hissed at the man who had been shadowing me around the market for the last ten minutes.  
  
“But everyone says you're a stone killer, aren’t my caps good enough for you?” Paul Pembroke, the cuckold husband of Darcy Pembroke, said far too loudly for my comfort. I really didn’t need the guards getting the idea that I was willing to do work _inside_ Diamond City.  
  
“Look mate, I don’t give a rats arse who your slag of a wife spreads her legs for and no amount of money will make me top a bloke over it.” I said bluntly as I finally got near a darkened out of the way corner of the market, somewhere where people couldn’t see things if I decided to make my displeasure known in a more physical manner.  
  
Ever since word got around that I was willing to take jobs dealing with the more dangerous aspects of life in the Commonwealth I’d had idiots like Paul coming to me asking for all sorts of stupid shit. Hell one dude even asked me if I could get him Deathclaw eggs and another wanted me to kill his wife.  
  
Bloody hell. What is wrong with these people? Where did they get the idea that just because I was willing to kill ghouls and move packages around that I was a hitman? The worst thing was I swear the guards were just waiting for me to slip up so they could haul me in nice and clean like and make an example of me.  
  
“Don’t talk about Darcy that way!” Paul said with his fists clenched at his sides and his face going red, “It’s all that Henry Cooke’s fault! He’s taking advantage of her!”  
  
“Takes two to tango mate.” I said shaking my head, “Maybe if you were giving the right stuff at home she wouldn’t be playing away.” I added cruelly, honestly I just wanted him to piss off and solve his own problems rather than trying to hire me to do something highly stupid.  
  
Paul didn’t seem to appreciate my honesty, screaming at me incoherently as he swung wildly with a roundhouse punch. I could have dodged that swing when I was ten, it was utterly pathetic. I had maybe half a foot and three stone on the guy, I always tend to think in old money when I’m fighting, a legacy of my grandfather who taught me to fight. Even if I didn’t he still wouldn’t have been a threat, he had no form at all.  
  
I stepped forward, under the swing, bringing up my left arm to catch his blow, careful to use my forearm to tap his own instead of going near the fist, and gave Paul a good old Glasgow kiss. That is I headbutted him so hard that his nose practically flattened against his face, blood spraying everywhere.  
  
I might have been a little harsh, but he hadn’t taken the hint with my earlier attempts to be polite, so it was a matter of making an example so people would fuck off and leave me alone. I didn’t need their shit bogging me down.  
  
“Ma nos’! Ma nos’!” Paul cried out from the ground as he tried to stem the bleeding.  
  
“Oh suck it up you pussy.” I said sighing and dropping a rag into his lap before walking away. I was such a bleeding heart.  
  
***  
  
“ _Monsieur_ Sam... is that _blood_ on your forehead?” Curie asked as I stepped into the Science! Centre a short time later. I reached up to touch my forehead and noted that yes there was still a little bit of blood there.  
  
“Damn I thought I got it all.” I said, reaching into my pocket for another rag to scrub the evidence away with. No wonder people were giving me odd looks on my walk here. “It gone now?”  
  
“ _Oui_.” Curie replied as she drifted closer, “However I am more concerned about how you got blood on yourself in the first place.”  
  
“Oh it was nothing, just a little disagreement.” I replied with a shrug, glancing around the little lab. Built out of the same wood and corrugated iron as the rest of Diamond City it was nonetheless very stereotypical, microscopes, beakers, and bunsen burners on countertops, notes everywhere and a handful of computer terminals at the back of the room near a beaten up sofa. “So where are the ladies of science?”  
  
“Doctor Duff and Professor Scara are having ‘date night’.” Curie said with a titter, “It is a condition that Doctor Duff insistes upon for their partnership and that Professor Scara acquiesces to with reluctance. I believe they are having dinner at the Taphouse in the upper stands.”  
  
“Well that’s one way to handle a relationship I guess.” I said with a chuckle before focusing on Curie again, “So you left word with Piper that you wanted to speak to me when I had a chance?”  
  
Curie generally left very early in the morning before Nat and I even looked to be waking up, Piper was also similarly an early bird. I didn’t really hold it against her since she made coffee in the mornings.  
  
“ _Oui_ ,” Curie said bobbing her eyestalks, “over the last several weeks I have come to a disturbing conclusion about my endeavour to further science.”  
  
“Oh?” I promoted, leaning back against the wall. It was something Curie had shared with myself, and Piper, during the week we had been hiding out while Nick was arranging our return to Diamond City. Curie wanted to _learn_ and more importantly to _contribute_ to the pool of scientific understanding of human-kind. It was something I could applaud... If it wasn’t for her sucking my blood like a vampire every bloody day. She was _still_ trying to work out why I hadn’t died a horrible death to that mole-rat infection.  
  
I really couldn’t follow all the terms she thought out, biology was never my strong suit, I much prefered the hard and fast reliability of technology. Still I understood why she was so interested. If we could discover how it worked and how to replicate it then we could produce more of her cure, that would be a huge discovery worthy of any scientist and improve so many lives.  
  
Near as she could figure the factor inside my blood was constantly boosting my immune system and _intelligently_ adapting it to fight off infections in the most efficent manner possible. As I said I really don’t understand biology all that much but I do know that is _not_ how an immune system is supposed to function.  
  
Naturally it was all about trial and error, throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks, while keeping past successful tricks around to throw at the next invader. This whole adapting on the fly in a targeted matter _should not_ be possible. At least not without some sort of analytics engine, and yeah I know all about nanomachines and the hopefully theoretically biologically based computers but nothing inside me even hinted at that.  
  
“In all honestly I do not believe I can make a contribution as I am now.” Curie said after a long moment, “All my work has been simply rehashing theories already discovered by brighter minds, I have created nothing of my own.”  
  
“Curie, Hon,” I said with a shake of my head, “isn’t that what science, real science, is all about? Standing on the shoulders of giants and iterating on their work? The whole lone creator revolutionizing everything in their lab after a late night is the stuff of bad fiction.”  
  
“That is true.” Curie said with another bob of her eyestalks, “However I still find myself lacking.”  
  
“It has only been a month, it took your namesake decades to make her mark.” I said with a sigh, “Give yourself a break, yeah sure you know more than she did at the start, but you have to take the long view.”  
  
“Perhaps.” Curie said, “Still I feel I could be something... greater than I am now, to find that mysterious spark that the philosophers speak of.” She paused, her shell drifting in the air slightly, “I wish to become human.”  
  
“Err...” I said, well that had come totally out of left field. “Hon, I don’t even know if that is possible. About the only people I know around here who can make human-like bodies are the Institute and I doubt they’ll just open their doors for us.”  
  
“That is true.” Curie said, “However I have been speaking to _monsieur_ Valentine and he suggests we visit his friend Doctor Amari who may be able to help.”  
  
“That... makes sense.” I said thoughtfully and it really did. Not only did she patch Nick up when he got hurt, which was depressingly frequent, but she made her living tinkering with people’s memories, allowing them to relive their fondest moments, so if anyone could suggest something it would be her.  
  
I hadn’t been near her since we’d met Nick, the whole Memory Den was too much of a temptation for me. Sure I might learn something about my arrival on this world by digging into my memories, but I also might become hopeless addicted to living out my best memories and wither away inside one of those pods.  
  
Honestly the whole thing was giving me a bad case of deja vu. It wasn’t quite the same but it was very much reminding me of a conversation I once had with a friend in the carpark of a shopping centre as we huddled on a bench between round of a magic the gathering tournament trying to sneak in a smoke before we were called back. She, at the time he, had been struggling with her gender identity and I was one of the first people she told about her plans to spend the next several years dealing with therapists and undergoing treatments to transition into her true gender.  
  
Now I was dealing with a robot that wanted to change... species? Was that even the correct word? Was there even _a_ correct term for it? I just hoped Curie wouldn’t be choosing a new name, because honestly the hardest part of dealing with transgender people was getting used to the new name. I mean I could totally respect it but I was always slipping up and annoying people.  
  
“Yeah, I suppose that does make a lot of sense.” I said repeating myself, “Just so you know I’ll support you in any way I can.”  
  
“Oh that is wonderful.” Curie said and I could swear I could hear the smile in her voice, “Now I just need enough currency to pay the consultation fee! I knew I could count on you!”  
  
“Wait? What? Money?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at Curie, “What money?”  
  
“Of course,” Curie said, her eyestalks tilting to the side in her version of a puzzled expression, “ _monsieur_ Valentine contacted the good doctor on my behalf and she is willing to speak to us on the subject but we will need to provide some of the local currency as a fee for her time.”  
  
“You know when I said support I meant moral support...” I said trailing off at the downcast expression she assumed. How the fuck does a robot without a face manage to look sad just by twitching her arms and eyestalks! That shouldn’t bloody work! “But I guess I can chip in a bit...”  
  
“Oh wonderful! My appointment is next week, I’ll need two hundred caps by then.” Curie said cheerfully, her arms waving around far too energetically for comfort considering two of the three contained weapons that could kill with ease. I hope she’s got those things safed! I really don’t want to get buzzsawed or lasered to death because she’s having a happy.  
  
“That’s... great...” I said as I wondered just how I got into these things. I swear there must be a god out there trying to make my life as difficult as possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Gun Porn is strong in this one... I had to cut almost six hundred words from it... Still I hope you enjoyed meeting Lola and Curie’s loyalty mission starts now! It took Sam a fair while to raise his affinity enough. Though I do wonder how he’ll go given he doesn’t have the Soul Survivor’s rep nor railroad connections to rely on.  
> All hail the great @Mizu for his labours of Hercules! I’ve got to figure dealing with my uncorrected writing is enough like cleaning out the Augean Stables right? :p


End file.
